Critical Reflections

This section contains responses to Bloomfield’s writing by his contemporaries and also a comprehensive archive of recent scholarly work by critics including Tim Burke, Keri Davies, Tim Fulford, John Goodridge, Ian Haywood, Bridget Keegan, John Lucas, Hugh Underhill, Sam Ward, Simon White, and Angus Whitehead.

Reviews

[Review of] Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs. By Robert Bloomfield. Author of the Farmer's Boy. Small 8vo. Pp. 119. 4s. Vernor and Hood. 1802. Anti-Jacobin Review, 11 (1802), 394–97

[Review of] Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs. By Robert Bloomfield. 8vo. 4. Boards. Vernor and Hood. 1802. The Critical Review, 35 (May 1802), 67–75

[Review of] Rural Tales, Ballads and Songs, by Robert Bloomfield, Author of the “Farmer’s Boy.” Small 8vo. pp. 130. The Poetical Register (January 1802), 426-27

[Review of] Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs. Bloomfield, Author of the Farmer's Boy . 12mo. 4s. Vernor and Hood. 1802. The British Critic: 19 (1802), 338-43

[Review of] The Banks of the Wye; a Poem. In four Books. By Robert Bloomfield, Author of the Farmer's Boy. 12mo. 134pp. 5s. Vernor and Co. &c 1811. The British Critic, 41 (March 1813), 227-30

[Review of] The Banks of the Wye, a Poem, in four Books. By Robert Bloomfield, Author of the Farmer's Boy. London, Vernor and Co. and others, 1811. 12mo. pp. 134. The Critical Review, 1.4 (April 1812), 375-79

[Review of] The Banks of the Wye, a Poem, in four Books. By Robert Bloomfield, Author of the Farmer's Boy. Foolscap 8vo, pp. 134. price 5s. Vernor and Co. and Longman and Co. 1811. The Eclectic Review, 7 (December 1811), 1103-20

Newsletters of the Robert Bloomfield Society

The Robert Bloomfield Society was inaugurated in 2001 and closed in 2017. It published regular newsletters, many containing valuable short articles on Bloomfield’s life, poetry and legacy.

Critical Reflections

Tim Burke, The Poetry of Friendship: Robert Bloomfield, John Clare, and the Labouring-Class Tradition

Keri Davies, Robert Bloomfield set to music

Tim Fulford, Bloomfield in his Letters: the Social World of a London Shoemaker Turned Suffolk Poet

Tim Fulford, Robert Bloomfield and John Dyer: Poets in the Welsh Marches

Tim Fulford, Problems with Patrons and Publishers: the Plight of the Labouring-class Poet

Tim Fulford, The Bloomfields and Henry Kirke White: Role Models and Stable Mates in the Market for Labouring-class Poetry

Tim Fulford, 'Poaching on their lordships’ manor': George Bloomfield Reflects on the Bloomfields’ Poetry and on Class Condescension

Tim Fulford, ‘To My Old Oak Table’: Robert Bloomfield Reflects on a Writer’s Struggle

Tim Fulford, John Clare and Robert Bloomfield: Brother Bards

Tim Fulford, Byron on the Bloomfields

Tim Fulford, George Bloomfield Reflects on His and His Brothers’ Lives

Tim Fulford, Robert Bloomfield Depicted: a Portrait Engraving After a Design by Solomon Polack

Tim Fulford, Robert Bloomfield’s Vaccination Poem

John Goodridge, ‘That deathless wish of climbing higher’: Robert Bloomfield on the Sugar Loaf

Ian Haywood, The Infection of Robert Bloomfield: Terrorising The Farmer’s Boy

Philip Hoskins, Robert Bloomfield’s Tour of the Wye in 1807: ‘Away, away to fairy land’

Bridget Keegan, The Ecological Robert Bloomfield: Giles’s Duty: Poetry, Husbandry, Sustainability

Bridget Keegan, Bloomfield as Occasional Poet

John Lucas, Sauce for the Daw

Andrew Rudd, The Bloomfieldian Imagination and the Sublime: Notes on ‘To Immagination’ (1800)

Hugh Underhill, ‘The Broken Crutch’: Bloomfield and Narrative

Hugh Underhill, Robert Bloomfield on the Aeolian Harp: ‘Nature’s Music’

Hugh Underhill, Robert Bloomfield’s ‘Winter Song’: an Introduction

Hugh Underhill, Lovers’ Journeys, Widows’ Tales: Crabbe and Bloomfield

Hugh Underhill and Sam Ward, Bloomfield’s London Residences

Sam Ward, Brother Bards: John Clare and Allan Cunningham on Bloomfield

Simon J. White, The Triumph of the Gander and Power Relations in The Farmer’s Boy

Simon J. White, Otaheite and The Farmer’s Boy

Angus Whitehead ‘The Poet Angling’: an Anecdote Concerning Robert Bloomfield and a Previously Unrecorded Epigram

Angus Whitehead ‘The rude inelegance of poverty / Reigns here alone’: Robert Bloomfield’s Portrait of St Andrew’s church, Sapiston, in The Farmer’s Boy

Angus Whitehead Bonaparte in Robert Bloomfield’s ‘The Shepherd’s Dream: or, Fairies’ Masquerade’