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 with English readers, who bought some twenty-six...

MIKE LOPRESTI The Record (Bergen County, NJ) 09-18-1997 BLOOMFIELD By MIKE LOPRESTI Date: 09-18-1997, Thursday Section: SPECIAL SECTION / SPORTS Edition: All Editions -- 5 Star, 4 Star, 3 Star, 2 Star, 1 Star The Bengals are a senior dominated squad that...

In the study of "laboring-class" poetry there has been a move away from the Bloomian model of literary influence, towards models of intertextuality which more accurately reflect the social and intellectual conditions in which these writers worked, and their often influence-hungry stance. (1)...

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.

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 reading of The Farmer's Boy yields a discussion of Bloomfield's restraint from moralizing and of his conservative intellectual approach.

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 for Bloomfield's poetry as praise for the depiction of an ideal, uncorrupted rural life.