North of Boston, the first edition, first issue, final binding state, inscribed by Frost in Amherst in April 1935.
London: David Nutt, 1914. First edition. Hardcover. This first edition, first issue, final binding state of the author’s second published book is inscribed by Frost in black ink in four lines on the front free endpaper recto: "To Gladys C. Combes | from | Robert Frost | Amherst April 1935”. This inscribed “Binding F” copy is in very good condition. The green cloth binding is tight and square with bright spine and front cover gilt and no discernible fading to the green cloth or color shift between the boards and spine. We note only trivial wear to extremities and faint mottling to the cloth. The book is clearly unread; signatures from page 13 on remain uncut. We find no spotting or previous ownership marks apart from the author’s inscription. The contents show modest age-toning and transfer browning to the pastedowns and facing endpapers from the pastedown glue.
We are unsure of Frost’s connection to Gladys C. Combes, but his connection to Amherst is unequivocal. Arguably, no other educational institution was as important to Frost as Amherst College. Amherst was home to Frost for the better part of two decades over a span of more than three. He joined the faculty in 1917 and received an honorary M.A. from Amherst the following year. He left Amherst in 1920, but returned in 1923 for another two years. Frost again returned to Amherst College in 1926, remaining until 1938. Following Frost’s death in 1963, his public service was held at Amherst’s Johnson Chapel.
In 1935, when he inscribed this first edition of North of Boston, Robert Frost (1874-1963) was still ascending to the dizzying literary heights that would let him spend his final years as “the most highly esteemed American poet of the twentieth century” with an accumulating hoard of academic and civic honors. The feat, remarkable in itself, is all the more remarkable considering that Frost did not publish his first volume of poetry until he was nearly 40 years old. By Christmas 1935, Frost had already won two of his to-this-day-still-unrivalled four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry (1924, 1931, 1937, and 1943).
It can be argued that the fulcrum on Frost’s path to literary greatness was publication of this first edition of North of Boston. In 1912, Frost moved to England with his wife and children – “the place to be poor and to write poems” – hoping to catalyze his recognition as a noteworthy American poet. A Boy’s Will was published there in 1913. Publication of North of Boston followed in mid-May 1914. North of Boston opens with the famous poems “The Pasture” and “Mending Wall” and was swiftly hailed by important reviews. It proved a watershed for Frost, bolstering his newly minted literary reputation and precipitating his return to the United States.
Complicating publication history, the 1,000 sets of first edition sheets saw six different binding variants over an eight-year period, due both to transfer of sheets for an American edition and to bankruptcy of the original publisher and resulting sale of remaining first edition sheets. In 1922, Dunster House Bookshop of Cambridge, Massachusetts, acquired the remaining 259 sets of first edition sheets. Of these, 59 were already bound in blue cloth, subsequently rebound in green cloth taller and narrower than the original 1914 binding. The final 200 sets of first edition sheets were bound in 1923 in coarse green linen cloth “almost identical in dimension with the original Nutt copies which were being imitated. Similarities of cloth and gilt-stamping in binding A and bindings E and F indicate that the work was done by the same binder in England before the later copies were sent to America.” These final 200 first edition, first issue copies – known as “Binding F” to bibliographers and collectors – were bound with untrimmed fore and bottom edges.
Reference: Crane A3; Parini, Robert Frost: A Life; ANB. Item #005842
Price: $3,900.00