John Clare's Career, "Keats's Publisher," and the Early Nineteenth-Century English Book Trade

Abstract

I. Interconnections THE RECENT COMPLETION OF THE NINE-VOLUME OXFORD ENGLISH TEXTS edition of Clare s poetry provides the most richly detailed portrait possible of Clare the solitary writer-at-work, producing his poems over six decades. The Oxford edition rejects the published poems in favor of their manuscript versions, ignoring the emendations that Clare solicited from his editor, John Taylor, and the editorial interventions of others. (1) Shifting attention away from skirmishes over editing the poems to Clare's and Taylor's financial and professional interdependence in the literary marketplace, this essay pursues instead the Clare who appeared in print--the poet his contemporaries knew, and to whom they responded. Our focus, then, is the public poet represented in the four collections he published, in his periodical writings, and in the critical reviews that re-presented his poems to a buying readership. Because print was the public medium of Clare's private ambitions, it remains the key to understanding the contemporary reception of the poet and his poems. Unlike Clare in composition, Clare in print is not a solitary figure; the presentation of his poems should be understood principally as a series of collaborative efforts by the poet and his publishers--most importantly, Taylor and his business partner, James Hessey. It is a critical commonplace that Clare was unfortunate because he strove to become a successful poet in a decade that was unpropitious for the careers of fledgling writers of verse. There has been little close scrutiny, however, of the economic climate in which he and Taylor operated, nor has there been a sustained interpretation of the Clare-Taylor publishing relationship in light of the difficulties they faced. We attempt to do both. Moreover, because critical considerations of Taylor's agency have overwhelmingly focused on his role as the editor of Clare's verses, there has, until now, been almost no analysis of the Taylor-and-Hessey bookselling business and its effect on the performance of Clare's poetry in the market. Repeated--and often perfunctory--gestures toward both the publishing climate of the 1820s and Taylor's role as editor-publisher have beguiled students of Clare into thinking they already know all there is to know about this crucial phase of his career. We undertake a re-examination of the salient facts in view of fresh and more detailed evidence. Clare's literary persona as peasant poet has received significant critical attention. Reinterpreting the Clare-Taylor relationship principally in terms of the business of books highlights instead Clare's active efforts to operate as one agent among others in a literary market that he studied carefully and read as best he could. Although the careers of Taylor and Clare have been amply considered, they have not been read as mutually interdependent, as we contend they ought to be. (2) By aligning Clare with Taylor and Hessey in a cooperative (and sometimes contentious) attempt to direct the public course of his poetic career, we seek to demonstrate that Clare and his publishers chose to make a mutual investment in each other's fortunes as a key to their common success in an unpredictable literary marketplace. This decision had far-reaching consequences for both parties. Our analysis principally emphasizes the early stages of their collaboration to bring Clare's poetry into public view, the period in which the first two volumes--Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820) and The Village Minstrel (1821)--appeared in quick succession. Clare's reception by the reading public was largely determined by the image projected in these first two collections; by the time his third, The Shepherd's Calendar, appeared in 1827, both Clare's high hopes and the partnership of Taylor and Hessey had dissolved. These early years had a profound effect on what was to follow, in the unfolding of the choices made by Clare and his publishers as they introduced him to readers and critics, and sought to shape the reading public's responses to his work. …