A Boy's Will, signed by Frost in Albany, New York.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1934. Second American Edition. Hardcover. This second American edition of the author’s first published book was signed by the author in Albany, New York. The inscription is inked in two lines on the upper front free endpaper recto: "Robert Frost | Albany".
Published in 1934, this edition was bound in tan linen cloth with a gilt-stamped brown front cover illustration panel (intertwined scythes) and brown spine title panel. The tan dust jacket features an ivy-covered fence post illustration repeated from the title page. Condition is very good in a very good dust jacket. The binding is square and tight with sharp corners and minimal soiling; two small instances on the lower spine and a few faint instances on the blank rear cover. The contents are clean, with no spotting or previous ownership marks. Age-toning is mild. The endpapers show some perimeter browning from the pastedown glue and there is a short, 1.5 inch split to the front endpapers at the lower gutter, slightly exposing the intact mull beneath and not affecting binding integrity. The dust jacket is unclipped and substantially complete, with trivial loss confined to extremities. The jacket shows spine toning and modest soiling, particularly to the lower right front face. The jacket is protected beneath a clear, removable, archival cover.
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 on 1 April 1913. “Yeats pronounced the poetry “the best written in America for some time” and Frost received “two extraordinary tributes in the Nation and the Chicago Dial and a superb review in the Academy.” (ANB) 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 his 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).
When Holt first published Frost’s first two books, Holt reversed the order of British publication, publishing the U.S. first edition of North of Boston in late March 1915, followed swiftly thereafter by the U.S. first edition of A Boy’s Will in April 1915. Holt did not publish this second U.S. edition of A Boy’s Will until 1934, by which time Frost’s reputation had grown considerably. Fittingly, this second U.S. edition is a considerably larger and more handsomely produced book than the first edition.
Reference: Crane A2.2; ANB. Item #008602
Price: $1,500.00