Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$475.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Henry Holt & Company. New York. 1934. 247 pages. First printing of the Third Edition, which is an expanded edition of the 1923 first edition, and the 1928 Revised edition, with 16 additional poems including The Runaway as well as other favorites from A Boy's Will, North of Boston, Mountain Interval, New Hampshire & West-running Brook; including The Road Not Taken. The first two edition preceding this third edition account for only 4,500 copies, and this edition expands upon that tiny print run, showcasing 16 additional poems. As such, Third Edition is stated upon the title page, and on the flap of the original, rare DJ. Book is tight. Binding and hinges are sound. No writing withing. Blue burlap cloth stamped in gold titles. Panels show sunning along edges. Page edges and blue endpapers show foxing. Original uncommon DJ with $2.50 price intact on flap. DJ shows shallow chipping and soiling. A solid copy of Frost's favorite collection selected by himself. VG/VG- with flaws noted.
Seller: Medium Rare Books, Mountainside, NJ, U.S.A.
Frost, Robert. A Boy's Will.. Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1934.
Price: US$1100.00 + shipping
Description: Second American edition of Frost's first published work. Octavo, original beige linen cloth, engraved title page. Signed and dated by the poet on the title page, "Robert Frost February 25 1936." In very good condition. Small ownership name. Frost's first commercially published book of poems, A Boy's Will was first published in 1913 by David Nutt in London, with a dedication to Frost's wife, Elinor. Its first American edition would come two years later, in 1915, through Henry Holt and Company. Like much of Frost's work, the poems in A Boy's Will thematically associate with rural life, nature, philosophy, and individuality, while also alluding to earlier poets including Emily Dickinson, Thomas Hardy, William Shakespeare, and William Wordsworth.â Despite the first section of poems having a theme of retreating from society, then, Frost does not retreat from his literary precursors and, instead, tries to find his place among them.
Seller: Raptis Rare Books, Palm Beach, FL, U.S.A.
Price: US$1750.00 + shipping
Description: This second American edition of the authors first published book is inscribed by Frost, apparently to his American publisher's secretary in four lines on the front free endpaper recto: "For Helen Lynch | from | Robert Frost | April 8 1935".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. The book is in fine condition, the jacket better than very good. The binding is square, clean, and tight with sharp corners and no discernible wear. The contents are bright and clean. The sole previous ownership mark is the signature of the recipient "Helen D. Lynch" inked on the upper front pastedown opposite the front free endpaper Frost inscribed to her. We are informed, but unable to definitively substantiate, that Helen Lynch worked at the time for Henry Holt and Company. The unclipped dust jacket is quite presentable, showing only fractional loss at the spine head and corners and light general wear to extremities, including a 1.5 inch (3.8 cm) closed tear at the upper rear face. The dust 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 Boys 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 Frosts second book, North of Boston, in 1914, after which "Frosts 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 Frosts 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 this much smaller U.S. first edition of A Boys Will in April 1915. Holt did not publish this second U.S. edition of A Boys Will until 1934, by which time Frosts 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
Seller: Churchill Book Collector ABAA/ILAB/IOBA, San Diego, CA, U.S.A.
FROST, Robert. A Boy's Will. Henry Holt and Compay, New York, 1934.
Price: US$12000.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Second American edition, with revised text. Illustrated from woodcuts by Thomas W. Nason. Recipient's pictorial bookplate on a front blank. Boards with some light staining, second half of the text block with a stain at the bottom corner not affecting the interior, endpapers with light offsetting and lower hinge with a very short tear, very good and sound, lacking the dust jacket. Inscribed by Frost with 12 lines of verse in his hand, being the first three stanzas of "A Prayer in Spring" (which appears in this collection in four stanzas), with seven textual variants in punctuation. Signed by Frost at the end of the poem and Inscribed below: "For Carol Kendall / Hanover May 1938." Crane A2.2.
Seller: Between the Covers-Rare Books, Inc. ABAA, Gloucester City, NJ, U.S.A.