The Road Not Taken, a souvenir copy of one of Robert Frost's most famous poems, signed and dated by Frost in 1937.
1937. This is a signed and dated 1937 souvenir copy of one of Robert Frost’s most famous poems. The four verses and 20 lines of “The Road Not Taken”, headed by the underlined title, are printed, centered, on a single sheet of laid paper measuring 7 x 4.8 inches. At the head of the sheet above the title, the poet signed and dated this copy in black ink in two lines “Robert Frost | 1937”. Condition is excellent, the sheet clean and complete with no creases, tears, or wear, the ink showing perhaps a touch of age-spreading but no fading. This item would lend itself well to framing. It is currently protected within a clear, removable mylar sleeve and housed in a rigid crimson cloth folder.
Frost’s poem has become a culturally pervasive metaphor for the interplay between choice and character. The poem "was first published in the Atlantic Monthly (Aug. 1915) and collected as the opening poem in Mountain Interval (1916).... We should not misunderstand Frost as abdicating method and design but rather using them seductively to bring the reader into the poem and thereby unveiling shades of meaning to the reader. The point is important to 'The Road Not Taken,' for it is indeed one of Frost's superb poems, perfectly capturing as if by camera one momentary scene in nature. A wistful tone is evoked by the autumn setting, nearly always a nostalgic and sometimes melancholy season in Frost’s poetry... Even as he stands in the present... at a seemingly harmless juncture in the woods, the poet feels the dramatic moment of the future... Finally he steps out on one path, which he chooses to call 'less traveled,' but it is, in fact, his choosing to regard it so that it will make all the difference for the future, for the paths, in truth, 'equally lay.'" (Frost Encyclopedia, pp.305-6)
Iconic American poet 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 a young family by teaching and farming. Ironically, a 1912 move to England with his wife and children – “the place to be poor and to write poems” – finally catalyzed his recognition as a noteworthy American poet. A Boy’s Will was completed in England and published there in 1913. Publication of North of Boston followed 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.” This paved the way for Mountain Interval to become Frost’s first book for which U.S. publication takes precedence. “The Road Not Taken” was the opening poem therein.
By 1924 Frost won the first of his eventual four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry (1931, 1937, and 1943). Frost spent his final years 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). Item #008171
Price: $5,000.00