Details
CLARE, John (1793-1864). The Rural Poems, London, Whittaker, 1835, 8°, FIRST EDITION, SIGNED by the author on front blank and dated "Novr 7th 1845", engraved frontispiece and title (both heavily spotted), wood-engraved illustration to "On Leaving the Cottage of My Birth" (occasional soiling), original cloth (shabby, ink stains on upper cover, spine rubbed).
Provenance: Jas. Marshall of Northton; Charles M. Robinson, "a present from his Grandma April 9th 1866"; Holbrook Jackson, 1921 (ownership inscriptions on front blank). A loosely-inserted, one page letter from Edmund Blunden to Holbrook Jackson, dated Cheveley Nr. Newmarket, July 9: 1921, declares "the signature to be Clare's own -- beyond doubt -- & what is more, it's the first Book that I've seen bearing the asylum signature. I imagine he gave it away to some friend in the town. It is a first edition; there was no 2nd, but there is a later binding -- it was Clare's best book, & I would say one of the best single volumes of verse ever produced by bard." Blunden and Alan Porter edited John Clare: Poems Chiefly from Manuscript (1924).
Provenance: Jas. Marshall of Northton; Charles M. Robinson, "a present from his Grandma April 9th 1866"; Holbrook Jackson, 1921 (ownership inscriptions on front blank). A loosely-inserted, one page letter from Edmund Blunden to Holbrook Jackson, dated Cheveley Nr. Newmarket, July 9: 1921, declares "the signature to be Clare's own -- beyond doubt -- & what is more, it's the first Book that I've seen bearing the asylum signature. I imagine he gave it away to some friend in the town. It is a first edition; there was no 2nd, but there is a later binding -- it was Clare's best book, & I would say one of the best single volumes of verse ever produced by bard." Blunden and Alan Porter edited John Clare: Poems Chiefly from Manuscript (1924).