Boys Will Signed Dated by Robert Frost (1 results)
More imagesPublished by Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1915
- Hardcover
- First Edition
- Signed
Seller: Churchill Book Collector ABAA/ILAB/IOBA, San Diego, CA, U.S.A.Churchill Book Collector ABAA/ILAB/IOBA
Contact seller5-star sellerHardcover. First U.S. edition, first printing. This American first edition, first printing of the author's first published book is inscribed on the front free endpaper in two lines: "Robert Frost | Amherst 1927". We need not wonder for whom Frost signed the book; the facing front pastedown features the only previous ownership ma…rk in the book that of librarian Katherine Brand.This edition saw a first printing of 750 copies in April 1915, one month after the American edition of North of Boston (reversing the publication order of the British first editions). Condition is good plus, sound, clean, and complete, though with some honest signs of age and wear. The blue cloth binding is square and tight with sharp corners, though with a significantly dulled spine and shelf wear manifesting in slight fraying of the cloth at the spine ends and corners. Second state of the first printing is confirmed by absence of the misspelled "Aind" replaced by "And" in the last line on page 14. The contents are clean, free of spotting or soiling, though age-toned and with some transfer browning to the front free endpaper from Katherine Brand's illustrated bookplate. Katherine Edith Brand (1900-1988) became a librarian in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. After graduating from Smith College in 1921 and secretarial school in Boston thereafter, she moved to Amherst in 1925, where she became secretary and research assistant to Ray Stannard Baker. Baker was the authorized biographer of President Woodrow Wilson and editor of his papers. In 1929, Brand accompanied the Wilson papers to the Library of Congress, where she remained until 1956, eventually heading the Manuscripts Section. Brand's papers, spanning diaries to unpublished writings to correspondence, are held by Smith College.Amherst, where Frost inscribed this copy, was home to Frost for the better part of two decades over a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 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. 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, a 1912 move to England with his wife and children finally catalyzed his recognition as a noteworthy American poet. A Boy's Will was completed in England and accepted for publication by David Nutt in 1913. Following English publication of Frost's second book, North of Boston, in 1914, "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 Frost's 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." Frost went on to win a still-unrivaled four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and spent the final decade and a half of his life 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 A2.1; American Archivist; ANB.
