Robert Bloomfield is perhaps the best of England's rural or "uneducated" poets, as Robert Southey termed them. Certainly his first and best work, The Farmer's Boy, struck an amazingly resonant chord w...
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In the following excerpt, the reviewer notes Bloomfield's elevation of his rustic subject through unaffected and eloquent poetry.
This poem [The Farmer's Boy] is ushered into the worl...
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In the following essay, Lucas argues that Bloomfield's “poetry was a means of securing a social identity at odds with his own origins.” He also interprets Clare's praise fo...
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In the following excerpt, the author finds Bloomfield's second book an extension of the virtuosity of his first.
We are pleasingly called away from our abstruser studies, by these production...
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In the following excerpt, the critic asserts that Bloomfield's second work, Rural Tales, equals the brilliance of his well-known The Farmer's Boy.
This volume cannot be better introdu...
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In the following essay, Bloomfield's preface to Wild Flowers; or, Pastoral and Local Poetry, the author offers insight into his subject matter.
A man of the first eminence, in whose day (for...
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In the following excerpted review, the author values Bloomfield for his lack of pretension and for his generosity toward his subjects.
Mr. Bloomfield's poetry, when connected with the remark...
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In the following excerpt, the author satirically meditates on “humble” poets before turning to extol Bloomfield as among the best of the uneducated poets, quoting extensively from his wo...
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In the following excerpt, Blunden examines Bloomfield's contribution to the genre of “earth-born poetry.”
The conversation of the men who work on the land, when their topic is ...
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In the following excerpt, the author reviews the critical response of Bloomfield's contemporaries to his poetry as well as some of the salient features of the poet's biography. A close r...
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In the following excerpt, Lawson discusses some of Bloomfield's later works, including his poem on the smallpox epidemic, and evaluates the poet's rural identity and influences.
The La...
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Robert Bloomfield
Critical Review by Monthly Review, or Literary Journal
