A Boy's Will, inscribed and dated by Frost to his friend, fellow poet, and future governor of Connecticut, Wilbert Snow.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1934. Second American Edition. Hardcover. This author’s presentation copy of the second American edition of the author’s first published book was inscribed in two lines on the front free endpaper recto in 1936 to Frost’s friend, fellow poet, and future governor of Connecticut Wilbert Snow: “Bill from Robert | Amherst 1936”.
This second American edition, published in 1934, 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 minus in a very good dust jacket. The binding is square and tight with sharp corners, its chief defect spotting to the linen cloth, primarily proximate to the spine and at the upper edges of the covers. The contents are clean, with no spotting or previous ownership marks, just a bit of perimeter browning to the endpapers from the pastedown. The dust jacket is unclipped and substantially complete, with shallow strip loss at and adjacent to the spine head. The jacket shows mild spine toning and is protected beneath a clear, removable, archival cover.
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 for him, 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.
By the time he was approaching the age of 40 in 1912, not-yet-iconic American poet Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963) had dropped out of Dartmouth and Harvard, tried farming and teaching, and decided to move to England with his wife and children – “the place to be poor and to write poems”. That finally catalyzed his recognition. The manuscript of A Boy’s Will was completed in England and accepted for publication by David Nutt on 1 April 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.”
Accolades met his return to America at the end of 1914 and by 1917 a move to Amherst – where this copy was inscribed – “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.” 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. 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 publishing 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.
References: ANB; NGA; Crane A2.2. Item #008603
Price: $1,750.00