The Order of Authors: Degrees of ‘Popularity’ and ‘Fame’ in John Clare’s Writing

Authors

  • Adam White University of Manchester

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21825/aj.v3i1.1070

Keywords:

John Clare, authorship, fame, poetry, authorial reputation, reception, Adam White

Abstract

This essay analyses Clare’s essay ‘Popularity in Authorship’, arguing that the work can be seen as a central statement in Clare’s recurrent concern with poetic fame and authorial reputation. By connecting ‘Popularity in Authorship’ with Clare’s sonnets on his Romantic contemporaries (Robert Bloomfield and Lord Byron), the essay contends that Clare’s complex understanding of ‘popular’ and ‘common’ notions of fame helps to bring into focus a distinctive contribution to debates about how authors were received by different audiences in the period.

Author Biography

Adam White, University of Manchester

Adam White currently teaches in English and American Studies at the University of Manchester, where he obtained his PhD. He has published a number of essays on Romantic poetry, most recently on Robert Burns and John Clare. In 2012 his essay on Leigh Hunt, John Keats, John Hamilton Reynolds, and John Clare was awarded second prize in the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association competition. For The Literary Encyclopedia he has written entries on Lord Byron, John Keats, the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Hardy.

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Published

2014-03-31

How to Cite

White, A. (2014). The Order of Authors: Degrees of ‘Popularity’ and ‘Fame’ in John Clare’s Writing. uthorship, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.21825/aj.v3i1.1070

Issue

Section

Special Topic: Reconfiguring Authorship