Description
This selection of John Clare's writings, both verse and prose, is the most ambitious yet attempted. All aspects of Clare's genius--bird poems, nature observations of all kinds, songs, ballads, social satire, reflections of English folk-customs, intense expressions of Clare's search for his identity--are represented here. Clare is the finest poet of first love and also the saddest voice of isolation and despair. The text is the result of more than thirty years' close study of Clare's manuscripts in England and the USA. It presents Clare's work with the minimum of editorial interference, selects the most authentic texts available, and allows the reader to encounter Clare's works exactly as he wrote them. --Oxford University Press.
