Robert Bloomfield: Lyric, Class, and the Romantic Canon

The Farmer’s Boy: A Rural Poem by Robert Bloomfield was published on March 1, 1800. It was an immediate success, going through seven editions, and selling twenty-six thousand copies in less than three years. Bloomfield published four additional volumes of poetry: Rural Tales, Ballads and Songs; Wild Flowers: or; Pastoral and Local Poetry; The Banks of Wye; and May-Day with the Muses. His work sold well during the nineteenth century, but over the course of the twentieth century, he became marginalized, unread, and ignored by academic criticism. A renewed interest in Bloomfield has, however, begun to take root over the last few years, driven in part by the continuing reconsideration of the traditional canon of Romanticism. Once again, Bloomfield is beginning to receive the attention that he deserves. This volume of critical essays marks Bloomfield’s reemergence as a significant literary figure and will demonstrate his relevance with current reevaluations of Romantic culture. Consisting of fifteen individual chapters, this collection brings together three types of essays: those considering major volumes of poetry by Bloomfield; those essays focusing on particular themes that dominate his corpus of work; and essays examining the significance of Bloomfield in a broader context.