SOURCE: “The Shepherd's Calendar” in ‘A Real World and Doubting Mind’: A Critical Study of the Poetry of John Clare, Hull University Press, 1985, pp. 34-68.

In the following essay, Chilcott presents a close study of the structure of The Shepherd's Calendar.

In January 1820, less than a week after the appearance of Clare's first volume, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, his publisher John Taylor wrote to him greatly approving his idea for a poem to be entitled ‘A Week in a Village’. In order to create an overall structure for the work, Taylor suggested that he might

divide the Week's Employments into the 7 Days, selecting such for each as might particularly apply to that Day, which is the Case with some of the Occupations;—that the remaining which might be pursued in any Day should be allotted so as to fill up the Time;—that the Sports...