Nathaniel Bloomfield

Nathaniel Bloomfield published a small body of English verse belonging to the rural literary world also associated with his brother Robert Bloomfield. An Essay on War, in Blank Verse appeared in 1803 as the leading poem in a collection that also included Honington Green, The Culprit, Yorkshire Dip, and a lyric addressed to Edward Jenner. The title poem considers the causes and consequences of armed conflict, moving from population and competition to battlefield suffering, memory, and the uneasy relationship between peace and martial virtue. Romantic Circles includes the poem in its scholarly edition of the collected writings connected with Robert Bloomfield, identifying its original London publication and page span. The volume’s preface explicitly links Nathaniel to the author of The Farmer’s Boy, while its varied contents show his interest in public questions, village change, elegy, and moral reflection. Bloomfield’s verse is less extensive than his brother’s, but this collection preserves a distinct response to war and social experience in the early nineteenth century.