Collected Poems of Robert Frost, with a charming 1932 drawing and gift inscription from American landscape architect Frank A. Waugh.
London, New York, Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., 1930. British first edition. Hardcover. This is the British first edition, with an illustrated, contemporary gift inscription from architect Frank A. Waugh. In six lines on the front free endpaper, Waugh wrote and signed: “To Mr. & Mrs. A. Belden Jr. | In grateful recollection | and endless delight of a trip | to Peking | Frank A. Waugh | May, 1932.” Directly above his inscription, Waugh drew a simple, rectangular structure on an elevated platform with steps below and a Chinese pagoda tile roof. Frank Albert Waugh (1869-1943) was an American landscape architect, professor of landscape engineering, and author who “played an instrumental role in developing campgrounds on national forests throughout the Rocky Mountain West.”
There were one thousand copies of this British first edition, comprising American first edition sheets bound and published in England by Longmans, Green and Co. with a new title-page. Condition is very good. The binding is square and tight with sharp corners, the spine only very slightly toned, the front cover with a small, circular spot of delamination and some soiling along the top edge. The contents are respectably clean and bright. Minor spotting appears confined to the endpapers and prelims. Minor age-toning is evident only to the page edges.
Unique in content, this collection, based on Frost's first five books, saw two poems printed for the first time (“The Last Word of a Bluebird” and “What Fifty Said”) as well as addition of four poems previously published only in periodicals.
Iconic American poet and four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963), the quintessential poetic voice of New England, was actually born in San Francisco and first published in England. When Frost was eleven, his newly widowed mother moved east to Salem, New Hampshire, to resume a teaching career. There Frost swiftly found his poetic voice, infused by New England scenes and sensibilities.
Promising as both a student and writer, Frost nonetheless dropped out of both Dartmouth and Harvard, supporting himself and a young family by teaching and farming. Ironically, it was a 1912 move to England with his wife and children – “the place to be poor and to write poems” – that finally catalyzed his recognition as a noteworthy American poet. The manuscript of A Boy’s Will was completed in England and accepted for publication by David Nutt in 1913. A convocation of critical recognition, introduction to other writers, and creative energy supported the English publication of Frost’s second book, North of Boston, in 1914, after which “Frost’s reputation as a leading poet had been firmly established in England, and Henry Holt of New York had agreed to publish his books in America.”
Accolades met Frost’s return to America at the end of 1914 and by 1917 a move to Amherst “launched him on the twofold career he would lead for the rest of his life: teaching whatever “subjects” he pleased at a congenial college… and “barding around,” his term for “saying” poems in a conversational performance.” (ANB) By 1924 he had won the first of his eventual four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry (1931, 1937, and 1943). Frost spent the final decade and a half of his life as “the most highly esteemed American poet of the twentieth century” with a host of academic and civic honors to his credit. Two years before his death he became the first poet to read in the program of a U.S. Presidential inauguration (Kennedy, January 1961).
Reference: Crane A14.2. Item #007990
Price: $300.00