Table of Contents

Editorial conventions and abbreviations. "The village minstrel" and other poems. "The parish". Overpunctuated poems in MS1. Explanatory notes. Glossary. Index of titles. Index of first lines.

Reviews

'it is marvellous to read the poems in their freshness, and the previously unpublished material reveals Clare as a poet of much greater variety than has sometimes been supposed'
Country Life
'This is true scholarship: these volumes - whatever their price and weight - are long overdue.'
Glasgow Herald
'Eric Robinson and David Powell have done everything humanly possible to ensure that Clare's work will never again be wholly at the mercy of fashions in taste'
Times Literary Supplement
outstanding quality ... It will unquestionably be the authoritative text of Clare's early poetry for decades to come.'
Tim Chilcott, West Sussex Institute of Higher Education, Review of English Studies, Vol.XLI, No.164, Nov '90
'Admirers of Clare, increased in number as a direct result of Eric Robinson's and his team's tireless efforts, will eagerly pore over the fine print of these texts, and just as eagerly await the next instalment of this mammoth project.'
Mark Story, University of Birmingham, Notes and Queries, March 1991