This volume contains the finest edition ever presented of Clare's classic poem `The Shepherd's Calendar', based on the world-wide manuscripts of Clare's poetry studied for over thirty years. Many of the accompanying poems are published for the first time and all are in the poet's original language.
Clare's The Shepherd's Calendar has become the classic poem of English rural life and ceremony. It was accompanied, when first published, by other poems, pastorals, and verse-tales, all of which appear in the first two volumes of the series, along with many others which were not collected in the 1827 collection. Clare's first editors also tidied up and standardized his vocabulary, grammar, and spelling, but his original language has here been restored. By the late 1820's, Clare had developed his own distinctive idiom and had adopted a more powerful voice. These volumes make an important contribution to the ongoing reassessment of Clare as a major English poet.
This is the first of five volumes devoted to Clare's "middle period," between 1822 and 1837, arguably the years of his finest creativity. These Poems of the Middle Period, which will complete the nine volume series of Clare's work, reveal the poet at his best.
Eric Robinson and David Powell have done yet further invaluable service in helping us to realise the remarkable triumph of Clare as a writer.
