North of Boston, inscribed and dated by Frost at Amherst in 1925.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1924. First U.S. edition, thirteenth printing. Hardcover. This is an inscribed thirteenth printing of the first U.S. edition of Robert Frost’s second published book, which bolstered his newly minted literary reputation and precipitated his return to the United States from England, where his first two books were published. In black ink in four lines on the upper front free endpaper recto Frost wrote: "For Robert H. Ball | the best wishes of | Robert Frost | Amherst 1925". This thirteenth printing was published in December 1924.
Condition is very good. The binding, featuring quarter green linen cloth over green, paper-covered boards, is square and tight with only modest shelf wear, the worst being minor fraying to the spine ends. The spine retains unfaded green hue, but the still-legible gilt spine print is dulled. The contents are age-toned but otherwise clean, with no previous ownership marks other than the author's inscription and trivial hints of spotting confined to the endpapers. The endpapers also show faint differential toning consistent with dust jacket flaps, suggesting that this copy was long protected by the dust jacket, now absent.
North of Boston opens with the famous poems “The Pasture” and “Mending Wall” and was swiftly hailed by important reviews when originally published in 1914. North of Boston was the first of Frost's books to be published in the U.S. (preceding the U.S. publication of A Boy's Will). It also found improbable commercial success. While the publisher "Holt had originally imported only 150 copies from [the British publisher] David Nutt in London, they quickly printed 1,300 more copies of their own; a year later, after four printings, the book had reached 20,000 sales - almost unheard of for a book of poetry."
Amherst, where Frost inscribed this copy, 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 – the year New Hampshire, his first book to win a Pulitzer Prize, was published – 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.
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. Ironically, a 1912 move to England with his wife and children – “the place to be poor and to write poems” – catalyzed his recognition as a noteworthy American poet. A Boy’s Will was published 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.” In 1924, when this thirteenth printing was published, Frost 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” enjoying 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).
References: Crane A3.2; Parini, Robert Frost: A Life. Item #008600
Price: $500.00