Robert Bloomfield
Robert Bloomfield (
December 3,
1766 -
August 19,
1823), was an
English poet.
He was born of a poor family in the village of
Honington, Suffolk. He lost his father when he was a year old, and received the rudiments of education from his mother, who kept the village school. Apprenticed at the age of eleven to a farmer, he was too small and frail for field labour, and four years later he came to
London to work for a shoemaker under an elder brother, enduring extreme poverty. The poem that made his reputation,
The Farmer's Boy, was written in a garret in
Bell Alley where half a dozen other men were at work, and the finished lines he carried in his head until there was time to write them down. The manuscript, declined by several publishers, fell into the hands of
Capel Lofft, a Suffolk squire of literary tastes, who arranged for its publication with woodcuts by
Thomas Bewick in
1800. The success of the poem was remarkable, over 25,000 copies being sold in the next two years.
Bloomfield's reputation was increased by the appearance of his
Rural Tales (
1802),
News from the Farm (
1804),
Wild Flowers (
1806) and
The Banks of the Wye (
1811). Influential friends attempted to provide for Bloomfield, but ill-health and possibly faults of temperament prevented the success of these efforts. An attempt to carry on business as a bookseller failed, his health gave way, his reason was threatened, and he died in great poverty at
Shefford, Bedfordshire, in
1823. (Where he now has a Middle school named in his honour.) His
Remains in Poetry and Verse appeared in
1824.
Bloomfield's poetry is smooth, correct, and characterised by taste and good feeling, but lacks fire and energy. Of amiable and simple character, he was lacking in self-reliance.
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Free ebook of Robert Bloomfield at
Project Gutenberg
