This study shows how poets worked within and against the available forms of nature writing to challenge their place within physical, political, and cultural landscapes. Looking at the treatment of different ecosystems, it argues that writing about the environment allowed labouring-class poets to explore important social and aesthetic questions.

Table of contents Acknowledgments List of abbreviations Introduction: 'A weed in nature's poesy': British Labouring-Class Nature Poetry, 1730-1837 'The Fields his Study': Robert Bloomfield's Poetics of Sustainability Return to the Garden: James Woodhouse and Polite Cultivations Heavenly Prospects: Views from Clifton and Cliffden Writing against the Current: Anne Wilson's Teisa and Labouring-Class River Poetry 'What terms of Art can Nature's pow'rs express?': William Falconer and Labouring-Class Poetry at Sea 'And all is nakedness and fen': John Clare's Wetlands Conclusion: The Politics and Poetics of Wood: Labouring-Class Poetry in the Victorian Era Notes Index

'Bridget Keegan's book is a work of meticulous scholarship and will be welcomed as a substantial contribution to the postmodern reassessment of the English literature canon that is going on in the academic world; but it also has things to reveal to the non-academic reader who holds that the realm of poetry is a classless republic.' - M.M. Mahood, John Clare Society Journal 'Her [Keegan] survey as a whole appears to be both well-informed and well-balanced. Students and lovers of English poetry will read it with profit and pleasure.' - Thomas Kullmann