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This item is the first publication of Frost s poem "On Making Certain Anything Has Happened" in Frost s 1945 annual Christmas card published by Spiral Press, accompanied by an October, 1945 pre-publication typed manuscript of the poem, initialed by Frost.The poem is the fourth of Frost s "Five Nocturnes" published together in 1947 in Steeple Bush, Frost s eighth poetry collection. With the permission of Frost and his publishers, in 1929 the Spiral Press began printing an annual Robert Frost Christmas Card featuring one of his poems in 1929. The tradition continued until 1962. For Frost s 1945 Christmas card, he selected the as-yet unpublished "On Making Certain Anything Has Happened. The Spiral Press printed a total of 2,600 copies, with eight varying names. This copy is one of 1,050 featuring the name of Frost s American publisher, Henry Holt and Company. Holt served as Frost s U.S. publisher for half a century, spanning North of Boston in 1914 to 1962 s In the Clearing, published on Frost s last birthday before his death in January 1963. This 1945 Christmas card is bound in wire-stitched, blue card covers with folded flaps, the covers and flaps featuring an illustration of the constellations by American printmaker Armin Landeck (1905-1984). The laid paper contents feature further star and compass instrument illustrations in gold, the balance of the contents printed in black. Condition of the Christmas card is near-fine, clean and complete with only trivial wear to the spine and flap folds.Accompanying the Christmas card is a pre-publication, typed manuscript of the poem, initialed by Frost at the bottom right: "R.F". Below and to the left of the typed poem and Frost s initials are two holograph inked lines reading: "October 28, 1945 | To be used as a Christmas card". The single sheet of watermarked paper measures 7.75 x 5.5 inches. Condition is very good plus, complete with mild toning, faint creases to two corners, and an old piece of cello tape at the upper left margin. The text of the typed, manuscript poem and the version published in the Christmas card are identical.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 New Hampshire. There Frost found his poetic voice, infused by New England scenes and sensibilities. Promising as a student and writer, Frost nonetheless dropped out of both Dartmouth and Harvard, teaching and farming to support himself and a young family. A 1912 move to England with his wife and children "the place to be poor and to write poems" finally catalyzed his recognition. There A Boy s Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914) were published, 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) He eventually won four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry (1924, 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 an accumulating 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). Reference: Crane B14 (Christmas card).
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