first edition Hardcover
2003 · New York
by Bate, Jonathan
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. Hardcover. xix, 648p. plus unpaginated acknowledgments; hardbound, the first American edition, handsomely bound in off-white cloth and boards and enclosed in a marvelously designed dust jacket showing subject Clare peeking out from a margin. Very faintest edgewear, a next to new copy: perfectly sound, clean and unmarked. Clare's life ended at "about" eighty years of age (birth records imperfect) in yet another mental hospital, sunk into himself; if roused, he might burst into obscenity. (Inventory #: 306116)