First edition. 12mo. Original publisher's blue boards and with grey paper spine with title label to spine. Uncut and unpressed. 4pp of preliminary adverts, with half title, but wanting front blank as always, 10pp of terminal adverts on leaves L4-L8.
 
A very good copy indeed with shallow chipping to the exposed part of the spine ends and joints starting, but sound. First gathering loosening but in tact. A very well preserved and entirely unsophisticated copy of Clare's rare first book. Housed in a custom cloth clamshell box.
 
An exceptional copy of John Clare's scarce first book, in original publisher's boards. Born in 1793, the son of humble and almost illiterate parents, Clare grew up in the Northamptonshire village of Helpston. His formal education, such as it was, ended when he was eleven years old, but Clare began writing poetry when he was thirteen and was astonishingly prolific. Like Robert Burns, with whom he has been compared, Clare was profoundly influenced by his surroundings, and his poetry is enriched by the use of his native Northamptonshire vernacular. Clare's poetry might never have remained in obscurity had not a local second hand bookseller, Edward Drury, found one of his poems on a "half sheet of dirty foolscap paper on which was penned 'The Setting Sun'". Drury introduced Clare to his cousin, John Taylor, who published this volume in an edition of 1,000 copies. It was an immediate success and was reprinted three times, selling 3,500 copies within a year, a most unusual occurrence for contemporary poetry. Despite this early success, Clare died in debt in a lunatic asylum in 1864. His legacy as poet of rural England has few rivals.
 
PROVENANCE: Frederic Dannay (1905-1982, mystery writer, who with Manfred Lee wrote under the pseudonym Ellery Queen, and book collector) his sale at Christies 1983.