Robert Bloomfield's letters document one artist’s struggles (and sometimes his victories) to share his unique voice and vision; the online publication of his extant letters (a companion to this collection of essays) reveals new and exciting insights into Bloomfield the artist and the man. The essays included in this collection highlight and draw attention to aspects of Bloomfield's literary production that would likely not be possible without the full access to his letters that the edition provides, and make a strong case for why Bloomfield continues to be worthy of study. They suggest how much more remains to be said about this prolific poet.
Abstract
This introduction argues for the importance of a scholarly consideration of Robert Bloomfield's interesting and extensive correspondence. It then offers a brief overview of the four essays including in this special number.
Abstract
This essay places Bloomfield in his social world—the world of Georgian London and of rural Suffolk and Wales. It makes extensive use of his correspondence to offer new insights into such issues as patronage and publishing, the book market, radical politics, Cockney London, and the picturesque tour. It shows Bloomfield to be a witty commentator on his time as well as an astute reader of the poetry of his contemporaries.
Abstract
This article takes as its point of departure Bloomfield’s repeated and insistent claim that he was a poet, not a politician. Drawing on the fascinating recently published correspondence of Bloomfield and his circle, it examines how the dissociation of poetry and politics in the post-revolutionary decades affected the poet’s public and private identities.
Abstract
This article argues that Robert Bloomfield’s seminal text The Farmer’s Boy is a much darker and more troubled poem than has been appreciated. Although recent criticism has begun to explore some of the poem’s ideological complexities, there is still a prevailing tendency to locate its imaginative resources and strengths in its depiction of a lost pastoral world of rural English labor.
Abstract
Robert Bloomfield twice wrote works explicitly for a juvenile audience. Little Davy’s New Hat was first published in 1815 and went through three separate editions by 1824. The Bird and Insects’ Post Office, which Bloomfield was writing with his son Charles at the time of his death, was published posthumously in his Remains (1824). With these texts, Bloomfield tried his hand at what was, in the early nineteenth century, a relatively new genre. In addressing a juvenile audience, Bloomfield joined some of the most important authors of the age.