RURAL  TALES,

BALLADS, AND SONGS.

By   ROBERT  BLOOMFIELD.

Author of the Farmer’s Boy

THE  THIRD  EDITION

L O N D O N :

PRINTED FOR VERNOR AND HOOD POULTRY.

____

1803.

DESCRIPTION

(ii) + ix + 119pp + (ii)

Book measures 160mm x 105mm approximately.

Bound in full ‘flame’ brown calf. Spine with gilt-ruled bands and with floral gilt motifs to compartments and maroon title label. Etched frontispiece to title page verso and further engravings throughout. All page edges speckled.

CONDITION

The binding is holding very firm. Some general minor wear to hinges and board edges, a few minor nicks and scuffs, some very small surface scratches and some moderate bumping to board corners.

Internally the pages are generally clean throughout with uniform age-toning and light browning throughout, and just a few random spots and a little light browning to end-papers. Occasional staining to engraving versos. Front end-paper a little weak. Previous owners signatures to front paste-down and front end-paper.

Please always refer to photo images for a clearer indication of condition.

We are always happy to provide further photo images if required.

INTERESTING

Robert Bloomfield (1766 to 1823) was an English labouring-class poet. He was born into a poor family in the village of Honington, Suffolk. His father was a tailor, who died of smallpox when his son was a year old. It was from his mother Elizabeth, who kept the village school, that he received the rudiments of education. Bloomfield was apprenticed at the age of eleven to his mother's brother-in-law, and worked on a farm that was part of the estate of the Duke of Grafton, his future patron. 

The poem that made his reputation was The Farmer's Boy and later Rural Tales. Unfortunately, his publishers, failed, and in 1812 Bloomfield had to move from London into a cottage rented to him by a friend in the village of Shefford. There one of his daughters died in 1814 and his wife became insane. To support himself, he tried to carry on a business as a bookseller but it failed. With failing eyesight and his own reason threatened by depression, he died in great poverty on 19 August 1823.