Click on the piece you would like to read
on the 'Page List" on the left.
Clare's 'tenement' occupied a quarter of this cottage in the centre of Helpston, which is now, thankfully, in the possession of the Clare Cottage Trust.
Clare's prose is particularly helpful in introducing us to his influences, culture and village background. It reveals his knowledge of folk-customs, sports and games, music, story, popular religion, nature, agricultural practices, and the language of the village street, fairs and fields, and his surprisingly wide reading. He might have mixed with the gentry and literati of his day, yet Clare is a bone-of-the-bone English labourer, clear in his opinions. His prose takes us into another world.