North of Boston, a Christmas gift from the author, inscribed and dated by Frost to his friend, fellow poet, and future governor of Connecticut, Wilbert Snow.
London: David Nutt, 1914. First edition, first issue, binding 'E'. Hardcover. This first edition, first issue, of the author’s second published book is a Christmas gift inscribed and dated by Frost to his friend, fellow poet, and future governor of Connecticut. Frost’s inscription is inked in two lines on the upper front free endpaper recto: “To Bill from R.F. | Christmas 1936”.
This inscribed presentation copy is Binding “E” of the first issue, one of only 59 copies bound thus in intentional emulation of the first issue binding. Condition is near fine, rendering this copy exceptional even without Frost’s inscription. The green cloth binding is square, clean, bright, and tight with sharp corners, no soiling, no color shift between the covers and spine, no wrinkling to the spine ends, and only the slightest hint of shelf wear to the edges. The contents are as clean as the binding, showing no spotting, soiling, or previous ownership marks other than the author’s gift inscription. We note only some inevitable age-toning and transfer browning to the endpapers from the pastedown glue.
The recipient, Charles Wilbert “Bill” Snow (1884-1977) was, at turns, an Eskimo teacher and reindeer agent in Alaska, a U.S. Army artillery officer, a professor at various prestigious universities, and author of several volumes of poetry. Snow reportedly met and befriended Frost in March 1925, when he was asked to speak at a public dinner for Frost’s 50th birthday. In 1944, eight years after Frost inscribed this volume, Snow entered politics. In 1946, Snow was Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut and the Democratic Party’s candidate for Governor. He lost the race but became governor anyway – albeit for just 13 days; the outgoing Governor resigned early to take a seat in the U.S. Senate, leaving Snow to fill in for the short interval before his victorious opponent took office.
North of Boston was published in mid-May 1914 during Frost’s sojourn in England. The book bolstered Frost’s newly minted literary reputation and precipitated his return to the United States. North of Boston opens with the famous poems “The Pasture” and “Mending Wall” and was swiftly hailed by important reviews. Complicating publication history, the 1,000 sets of first edition sheets saw six different binding variants over an eight-year period, due 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 North of Boston first edition sheets, all of which were ink-stamped “Printed in Great Britain” on the title page verso. Of these, 59 were already bound in blue cloth. These copies became binding “E”, rebound in green cloth just 9mm taller and 9mm narrower than the original 1914 binding. Here binding “E” is confirmed by coarse, grass-green linen cloth measuring 200 x 145 mm and a binding nearly identical to that of binding “A”, differing only in that the front cover blind rule appears only at the top and bottom, rather than the sides as well. The bindings for the final 200 sheets, which became binding “F”, were shorter and wider than Binding “E”. Crane (A3, p.15) notes that “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.”
The gift of this inscribed 1914 first edition to his friend in 1936 is noteworthy; by 1950, Frost would write to an admiring collector “I am a simple man, too simple in fact to be more than an onlooker at the competition for my first editions. I have kept none for myself.” (letter of 13 January 1950) Frost eventually won four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and spent his final decade and a half as “the most highly esteemed American poet of the twentieth century.” 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 A3; ANB; 13 Jan 1950 ALS. Item #008601
Price: $6,500.00