[Image : Shelly Rolinson]
From Clare's 'Autobiography'
On Sundays I usd to feel a pleasure to hide in
the woods instead of going to church to nestle
among the leaves & lye upon a mossy bank were the fir likefern its
under forest keeps
‘In a strange stillness’
watching for hours the little insects climb up & down the tall
stems of the woodgrass & broad leaves
‘Oer the smooth plantain leaf a spacious plain’
or reading the often thumbd books which I possesd till fancy ‘made them living
things’ I lovd the lonely nooks in the fields & woods & many favourite
spots had lasting places in my Memory
‘the boughs that when a school boy screend my head’
before inclosure destroyd them
---oOo---
Those who had the privilege of attending the Society Festival last July will have encountered, either on my bookstall, in the Clare Cottage or in
the Bluebell, one or other of my Arbour Editions Chapbooks.
Clare knew Chapbooks well, and it is in his honour I resurrected the form
for my 32-page books.
Historically a Chapbook is normally octavo in
size (A5) and is a book or made up of one or more full sheets of paper on which
16 pages of text were printed, which were then folded three times to produce
eight leaves. Each leaf of an octavo book thus represents one eighth the size
of the original sheet. These eight leaves are also known as ‘signatures’. So my Chapbooks being 32 pages in length are two
signatures long, or 16 octavo (A5) sheets.
Chapbooks first came about in
16th century England with popular fairy tales like "Jack and Giant
Killer" which Clare mentions of course:
To John Clare
Well honest John how fare you now at home
The spring is come & birds are
building nests
The old cock robin to the stye is come
With olive feathers & its ruddy
breast
& the old cock with wattles
& red comb
Struts with the hens & seems to
like some best
Then crows & looks about for
little crumbs
Swept out bye little folks an hour ago
The pigs sleep in the sty the bookman
comes
The little boys lets home close nesting go
& pockets tops & tawes
where daiseys bloom
To look at the new number just laid down
With lots of pictures & good
stories too
& Jack the jiant killers high
renown
(written in around 1861)
Chapbooks were cheaply constructed and often
roughly printed, but during the 17th Century and later they were
purchased by people who otherwise weren't able to afford books. Very few
survive as they were often thrown out after reading, or often (it is said) used
as toilet paper!
The number of chapbooks printed in England is
mind boggling. During the 1660s, as many as 400,000 almanacs were printed
every year, enough to distribute to one of every three households in the
country.
I've
been planning such for several years, to introduce the general reader to a
wider range of 'Clare-related' subjects, each book concentrating on just one
topic. In keeping with their history my Arbour Editions Chapbooks
are very inexpensive, but in a break with tradition the books are high quality
productions with gloss covers.
I have around a dozen titles planned, and have
to date published five, all at £3.50:
1.
'Drinking with John Clare'
2.
'Helpston's Fountains'
3.
'With the Gypsies'
4.
‘Playing Games with John Clare’
5.
“Accursed Wealth”
The
sixth, ‘Trees – In a Strange Stillness’ is of
double length (64 pages) and the first Chapbook in full colour - 17 colour
photographs illustrating Clare’s text – priced at £6.50 including post and
& packing. The idea for this book came from an essay written by
Professor Eric Robinson in 1989 which has not been widely read, so with his
permission ‘Trees’ was created with the ‘Introduction’ by Professor Eric and
myself. Here is a extract:
“Clare’s map of boyhood was full
of trees, from the elm trees that rocked over his cottage to the hollow oaks
and old willows in which he hid from pelting rain and prying eyes. They
were his cradle, his robbers’ cave, his pulpit, his study and his refuge.
They were his friends and he knew them as individuals whose passing he
mourned as he mourned the loss of his first love, Mary Joyce. There seems
little doubt that he felt for them the same constriction of the heart and the
bottomless stomach that the rest of us experience from human loss.
Trees were the signposts of his daily rambles, the monuments of
his tradition, the guardians of his dead and the symbols of changing
time. Twice at least in his Journal Clare comments on stories about the
rapid growth of trees in the Helpston neighbourhood and in terms that
demonstrate the particularlity of his tree-observations.
Clare was concerned about maintaining the tree population of his
environment, and in a sense the history of Helpston and of our poet, is that
partly told in trees. Then came enclosure when, for the trees, a
wholesale devastation took place.”
So there we have it, inexpensive, paperback
sized, quality productions... the ideal gift for the lover of Clare. Or
perhaps that friend who just might love Clare if only they had opportunity to
read the great man’s work.
The book will be published on Friday, 19th January, priced at
£6.50 (including P&P)
Just email me at arborfield@gmail.com
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