The Village Minstrel, and Other Poems; [together with:] Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery.

London: Printed for Taylor and Hessey, and E. Drury; Whittaker & Co.,, 1821. First edition of The Village Minstrel, Clare's second collection, bound together in contemporary calf with the fourth edition of Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, the poet's first book, which was first published the previous year. The son of a farm labourer, John Clare (1793-1864) was inspired to become a poet after reading James Thomson's The Seasons. In 1819, in order to forestall his parents' eviction from their home, he offered his own poems to a local bookseller Edward Drury, cousin to John Taylor of the publishers Taylor & Hessey (who had published Keats's poems). The result, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, became something of a publishing sensation, with the 1,000 copies of the first edition selling out in two months. He published only three further books: The Village Minstrel in 1821, The Shepherd's Calendar in 1827, and The Rural Muse, his fourth and final collection, in 1835. During his lifetime, Clare was celebrated as an English Robert Burns, and his poetic talents, seemingly springing from nowhere, caught the attention of a reading public fascinated by the idea of "inspiration" and its sources in nature. Three volumes, duodecimo (170 x 99 mm). Contemporary brown calf, smooth spines lettered and decorated with lyre and leaf tools in gilt, covers blind tooled to a "basket weave" pattern, gilt rules to covers, gilt roll to edges, green endpapers. Engraved portrait frontispiece to vol. I of The Village Minstrel. Bookplate of art historian and museum curator John Arthur Giles Gere (1921-1995) to front pastedowns, ownership signature of "William Davidson, Plumstead, Kent" to first blanks. Smart and neat refurbishment to joints, light browning to endpapers, faint foxing to first few pages of vol. I of The Village Minstrel, contents otherwise clean and free from marks. A very good set, attractively bound.