by Adam Foulds
First published 2009
John Clare sits in an asylum in Epping Forest in 1840, his mind clouded by years of drink and despair. The nature poet who once walked free across fields now faces walls and routines designed to heal through work and occupation. The asylum operates under reformist ideas about treatment, but Clare dreams of the countryside beyond its boundaries. Meanwhile, young Alfred Tennyson takes up residence nearby and becomes drawn into the asylum's world. Clare struggles between his memories of home and his current reality, between his poetic vision of the natural world outside and the confined space where doctors believe they can cure him. The forest calls to him while the institution holds him. This becomes a story about a poet's battle for his mind and soul, set in a place where two future literary giants cross paths during a dark chapter of Victorian treatment of mental illness.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, mental-illness, 19th-century
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: character-driven, fish-out-of-water, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Epping Forest, Victorian England
Period: 1840
272 pages · Kindle Edition · Vintage Digital
Content warnings: mental-illness