London: Printed for Taylor and Hessey, Fleet Street; and E. Drury, Stamford 1821. First edition, Carter's variant binding 'B', complete with half-titles and four pages of publisher's advertisements at the back of the second volume. Carter, Binding Variants, p. 104. 2000 copies printed. The Village Minstrel reveals Clare as a far more versatile and accomplished writer than had been apparent from his first book. The main body of the first volume is dominated by the title poem, Clare's first attempt at a sustained autobiographical meditation in verse. It is followed by a miscellany of poems, with songs and ballads interspersed among descriptive and reflective pieces in which Clare describes himself walking or sitting alone in the countryside, watching and recording the processes of nature. The second volume contains the sonnets in which Clare's miniaturist art begins to mature as well as a glossary Taylor compiled from information provided by the author. Jonathan Bate, John Clare: A Biography (NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), pp.223-231. 2 volumes, small 8vo, frontispiece portrait by E. Scriven after a portrait by W. Hilton in Vol. I, frontispiece engraving of Clare's cottage in Vol. II, original cloth-backed boards with paper spine labels . Former owner's neat signature, "Edw. Cragg 1843", in upper right-hand corner of the title-pages and on paste-downs, extremities of boards a trifle rubbed, spines and covers a bit soiled, but in general an exceptionally fine set in original condition, preserved in a folding cloth box. The Bradley Martin copy.