Robert Bloomfield (3 December 1766 – 19 August 1823) was an English labouring-class poet, whose work is appreciated in the context of other self-educated writers, such as Stephen Duck, Mary Collier and John Clare.

[1] Bloomfield was apprenticed at the age of eleven to his mother's brother-in-law, and worked on a farm that was part of the estate of the Duke of Grafton, his future patron.

The manuscript was declined by several publishers and was eventually shown by his brother George to Capel Lofft, a radical Suffolk squire of literary tastes, who arranged for its publication with woodcuts by Thomas Bewick in 1800.

There was even a Latin translation of parts of it – De Agricolae Puero, Anglicano Poemate celeberrimo excerptum, et in morem Latini Georgici redditum – made by the lively Suffolk vicar William Clubbe.

As a result, the Duke of Grafton, who lived at Euston Hall near the village of Bloomfield's birth, settled on him a small annuity of £15 and used influence to gain him employment in the Seal Office to the King's Bench Court and then at Somerset House, although he did not work for long at either.

[6] Other publications by Bloomfield included Good Tidings (in praise of inoculation at the instigation of Edward Jenner, 1804); Wild Flowers or Pastoral and Local Poetry (1806); and The Banks of the Wye (a poetic journal of a walking tour taken in the footsteps of Wordsworth, 1811).

Here, for instance, is the episode in "The Farmer's Boy" where Giles chops up turnips to feed to the livestock in winter: However, such verse varies little from the work of many of Bloomfield's contemporaries, such as James Montgomery and Ebenezer Elliot, whose names, like his, were well known in their time but are scarcely remembered now.

[9] Byron commented on the brothers in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (lines 775–786),[10] linking Robert's name favourably with other poets of humble beginnings such as Burns and Gifford, but dismissing Nathaniel's writing as routine and uninspired.

Byron returned to the charge in Hints from Horace with the apostrophe: Although a note makes it clear that Nathaniel is his principal target, he also seems to include his "brother Bobby" in the accusation that Lofft "has spoiled some excellent shoemakers and been accessory to the poetic undoing of many of the industrious poor.