The Quickening Maze
John Clare's story is only one strand to Andrew Foulds very impressive novel. However, it is the theme that I have chosen to contextualise.
Jonathan Bate's biography is a wonderful read, even if you are not a great lover of Clare's writing. And his selection of Clare's poetry has a number of pieces written in the Essex Asylum which is the setting for Fould's novel.
Sinclair followed Clare's 'journey out of Essex', when he escaped the Asylum run by Walter Allen, which is the concluding sequence of The Quickening Maze, and is, as Clare himself told it, one of the most impressive pieces in his Autobiographical Writings. Selected Letters has several sent from his Epping incarceration.
So now surely it must be time for Eric Robinson to start huffing and puffing and making himself ridiculous. (He is the American academic who has claimed the copyright to Clare's previously unpublished works and in the process has earned himself the disgusted denigration of a generation of Clare sympathists.)
The Quickening Maze
John Clare's story is only one strand to Andrew Foulds very impressive novel. However, it is the theme that I have chosen to contextualise.
Jonathan Bate's biography is a wonderful read, even if you are not a great lover of Clare's writing. And his selection of Clare's poetry has a number of pieces written in the Essex Asylum which is the setting for Fould's novel.
Sinclair followed Clare's 'journey out of Essex', when he escaped the Asylum run by Walter Allen, which is the concluding sequence of The Quickening Maze, and is, as Clare himself told it, one of the most impressive pieces in his Autobiographical Writings. Selected Letters has several sent from his Epping incarceration.
So now surely it must be time for Eric Robinson to start huffing and puffing and making himself ridiculous. (He is the American academic who has claimed the copyright to Clare's previously unpublished works and in the process has earned himself the disgusted denigration of a generation of Clare sympathists.)