Russell Brain: Some Reflections on Genius, 1960. Lord Brain concluded that Clare was not schizophrenic, but suffering from a manic-depressive (circular) psychosis: this would be consistent with the ‘sanity’ of his poetry and the alienations of his conversations and letters.

p. 20 These quotations are from William James: ‘On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings’.

p. 22 Seamus Heaney’s observations are from his essay ‘In the Country of Convention’, Preoccupations, Faber, 1980.

The Poems Sources of Texts

Days and Seasons: all texts newly transcribed from Peterborough MSS A40, A41, A43, A45 and A54, collated with The Midsummer Cushion, ed. Anne Tibble and R. K. R. Thornton (MidNag/Carcanet), 1979 (in these notes, MC), and with The Rural Muse, ed. R. K. R. Thornton (MidNag/ Carcanet), 1982 (RM); except for ‘Summer Evening’ and ‘Crows in Spring’, which come from Eric Robinson and Geoffrey Summerfield, eds., Selected Poems and Prose of John Clare, Oxford University Press, 1967 (R S), a transcript of texts from various Northampton and Peterborough MSS. In the case of a few words, I have preferred the R S variant to that in M S A54.

Landscapes with Figures: all texts newly transcribed from MSS as above, except for ‘A Sunday with Shepherds and Herdboys’, and ‘Snow Storm’, which come from RS.

Birds and Beasts: all texts transcribed from MSS as above, except for ‘To the Snipe’, ‘The Martin’, ‘The Hedgehog’, ‘The Fox’ and ‘The Badger’, from R S.

Loves: all texts from MSS as above, except for ‘Dedication to Mary’ and ‘I’ve ran the furlongs . . .’ (RS).

Changes and Contradictions: all texts transcribed from M S S as above, except for ‘The Mores’ (R S) and ‘The Lament of Swordy Well’, from E. Robinson and D. Powell, John Clare, Oxford University Press, 1984 (R P).

Madhouses ... : all texts transcribed from Northampton MSS 6, 8, 9, 10, 19 and 20, Peterborough MS A 62, and Bodleian MS Don. A 64, except for the first three poems, which appeared in the English Journal, May 1841.

The English Bastille: all texts transcribed from Knight’s transcripts, Peterborough MSD 24, and from MSS6, 9, 10 and 19, as above; except for ‘And only o’er the heaths . . .’and ‘I look on the past . . .’ which were published in the USA in June 1937.

p. 31 Clare used the sonnet-form throughout his life. In his early sonnets he is an invisible spectator, watching and listening; in the prospect, he blends both near and far, animating the landscape with movements of birds, animals and representative humans. Many of these sonnets end with a brief evaluation, an affirmation of positive satisfactions.

p. 32 The Wheat Ripening: Clare’s models for his earlier poetry derive from eighteenth-century topographical poetry: the marks of ‘literariness’ can be detected in ‘What time the . . .’, ‘maiden’, ‘list’ the clown’, ‘lark’s ditty’: this is clearly not the language of his village neighbours.

p. 33 A Morning Walk: throughout 1831 and 1832 Clare wrote out a fair copy of the poems that he wished to include in a projected volume, The Midsummer Cushion: his proposal to publish this by subscription failed, and some of the contents of the manuscript were selected, modified, edited and cleaned up by other hands to form The Rural Muse, 1835.