The additional material in this volume of poems from Clare's middle period includes some of his finest poems, such as `The Last of Summer', `The Mole Catcher' and the whole manuscript, now lost, entitled `Birds Nesting'. Clare's but his original language and usage has here been restored, his distinctive idiom and highlighting the more powerful voice evident throughout his verse written in the late 1820s. These volumes will make an important contribution to the ongoing reassessment of Clare as a major English poet.

This is the second 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.