Selected Poems, inscribed by Frost at Amherst to a student in the year of publication.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1923. First edition, first printing. Hardcover. This first edition, first printing, of the first volume selection of Frost’s published work is inscribed by Frost to a student at Amherst in the year of publication. Frost’s inscription is inked in black in five lines on the upper front free endpaper recto: “For | Elbridge Sibley | from | Robert Frost | Amherst November 1923”. The printed bookplate of “Elizabeth AND Elbridge Sibley” is affixed to the front pastedown. Condition is good plus, sound and complete, though showing some honest age and superficial wear. The quarter cloth spine shows dulled but still clearly legible gilt and shelf wear at the ends. The paper-covered boards, with their repeating gilt wreath design, remain bright, though with minor overall soiling and scuffing, and heavier rubbing to the corners, exposing the card beneath. The contents are mildly age-toned, but free of spotting. The dull green top stain retains uniform hue.
This first edition of Selected Poems was published on 15 March 1923. “Frost was originally against the idea of a volume of selected poems; he wanted his new books of poetry to have priority, and he believed reviewers would see such a collection only as a plea for attention. In contrast, reviews primarily praised Selected Poems and found the volume important as the first selection of his published work.” For the volume, Frost selected forty-three poems, all but one from A Boy’s Will (1913), North of Boston (1914), and Mountain Interval (1916). The only previously unpublished poem in the volume is “The Runaway” which appeared in New Hampshire, published exactly eight months after Selected Poems, on 15 November 1923 – the same month this volume was inscribed.
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 this copy of Selected Poems was published and inscribed there by him for a student – 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.
Elbridge Sibley (1903-1994) was a student at Amherst when Frost inscribed this volume for him. Sibley earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst in 1924, from which he went on to earn his Masters in 1925, followed by his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1930. From 1932-1946, Sibley taught Sociology at Bowdoin College, which eventually established and still maintains The Elbridge Sibley Prize in his name, awarded to an academically outstanding senior majoring in Sociology or Anthropology. Sibley also worked for the U.S. Bureau of the Budget and served on the President’s Committee on Selective Service during the Second World War, and thereafter administered fellowship programs of the Social Science Research Council for more than a quarter of a century.
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. In 1912, Frost moved to England with his wife and children, where publication of A Boy’s Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914) led to critical recognition. Accolades met Frost’s return to America at the end of 1914. A 1917 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.” Frost eventually claimed four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry (1924, 1931, 1937, and 1943) and spent his final years 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).
References: Crane A5; Tuten and Zubizarreta; Bowdoin.edu; ANB. Item #008708
Price: $1,650.00