Complete Poems of Robert Frost, number 85 of the signed, numbered, and limited first edition, a superb copy still housed in the publisher's slipcase and retaining some of the original glassine jacket.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1949. Limited, numbered, and signed issue of the first edition. Hardcover. This is an exceptional copy of the limited, numbered, and signed first edition of Robert Frost's Complete Poems. This limited edition of 500 copies was published in April 1949 and is the true first edition, preceding the trade edition published in May. This limited edition was printed on heavy white wove paper with blue-green stained top edges and blue-green endpapers. The limitation page preceding the frontispiece is hand-numbered and signed by Frost. The heavy beige linen cloth binding features Frost’s facsimile signature stamped in blue-green on the front cover and a blue-green spine panel. The edition was issued in a plain, glassine wrapper and housed in a plain, blue-green paper-covered slipcase.
This copy, numbered “85” on the limitation page, is truly fine, almost as-new. The binding’s sole trivial flaw is a barely discernible hint of faint toning at the lower left of the spine and a small, adjacent spot on the rear cover. The binding is otherwise immaculate. The contents feel untouched – crisp, clean, and bright. The fragile glassine jacket, which inevitably brittles and tones, is present in part – most of the rear face, the rear flap and the front flap remain. The publisher’s slipcase is toned and scuffed with wear at the opening corners, but nonetheless intact and having done its job, protecting the lovely book within.
“In addition to RF’s introduction, ‘The Figure a Poem Makes’ (printed first in Collected Poems, 1939), this collection contains everything included in the 1930 and 1939 collections as well as all the poems from Steeple Bush (1947), the texts of A Masque of Reason and A Masque of Mercy, and three poems previously printed elsewhere: ‘Choose Something Like a Star’ (printed first in Come In, 1943), ’Closed for Good’ (the 1948 Christmas poem), and ‘From Plane to Plane’ (printed first in What’s New, 1948).
According to his publisher, when Frost was reminded that his collected poems “was a volume of some six hundred pages and represented sixty years of writing” he said “That means I’ve been writing less than ten pages a year. It’s discouraging.” The comment is an archetypal bit of Frostian faux simplicity and gently misdirecting, deprecating wit.
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. There Frost swiftly found his poetic voice, infused by New England scenes and sensibilities.
Promising as a student and writer, Frost nonetheless dropped out of both Dartmouth and Harvard, supporting himself and a young family by teaching and farming. Ironically, a 1912 move to England with his wife and children finally catalyzed his recognition as a noteworthy American poet. The manuscript of A Boy’s Will was completed in England and published by David Nutt in 1913, followed by 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.” He eventually won a still-unrivaled four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry (1924, 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. 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 A35; Holt, Rinehart and Winston press biography of 1962; ANB. Item #008593
Price: $2,400.00