A Boy's Will A magnificent copy of the first edition, first printing, final binding variant Robert Frost Other Poetry,Other Signed & Inscribed

This is a magnificent example of the first edition, final binding variant of Robert Frost s first published book. It is difficult to imagine a superior extant copy. Despite its fragile wraps binding, this copy improbably approaches fine condition. The binding is gorgeously square, clean, bright, and tight with no toning, no vertical spine creases, and only the most trivial hints of shelf wear at the corners and spine ends. The contents are crisp and bright with no previous owner marks, no spotting, no soiling, and no evident age-toning. This book feels unread, inside and out. A plain glassine dust wrapper, age-yellowed, brittle, and chipped at the edges, is presumably not original, but has nonetheless long protected this copy. The book is housed in a vintage card slipcase with orange paper-covered sides and hand-lettered on the spine with the title and author s surname. First published in England in 1913 by David Nutt, the publication history of A Boy s Will is complicated by the fact that the reported 1,000 first edition sheets saw two issues in four variant bindings, owing in part to the bankruptcy of the original publisher and sale of remaining first edition sheets during the subsequent liquidation. This copy is the fourth and final binding designated binding "D". Nutt issued copies bound in both a bronzed brown cloth (1913) and in cream, vellum-paper wraps (1917). When Nutt folded after the First World War, their remaining stock of unbound first edition sheets passed to Simpkin Marshall, who had some bound, known as Binding "C" (1922). Soon thereafter, Dunster House acquired the unsold Binding "C" copies as well as the remaining unbound first edition sheets, which were bound by Dunster House in 1923 as Binding "D" This binding is cream linen-paper wraps, lettered as on all previous bindings, but in a heavier font without a horizontal bar surmounting the titular letter 'A' on the upper front cover and lacking a border rule. The ornaments are 4-petaled flowers (one above, one below the author's printed name) and, centered and descending below the second 4-petaled flower, two dots and a thin perpendicular wedge. The title page verso is ink-stamped "Printed in Great Britain".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, where 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 that finally catalyzed his recognition as a noteworthy American poet. The manuscript of A Boy s Will was completed in England and accepted for publication by David Nutt on 1 April 1913. English publication of North of Boston, followed 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 "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." Just a decade after A Boy s Will was published, in 1924, Frost won the first of his still-unrivaled four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry. Despite the fact that A Boy s Will was not published until he was nearly forty, Frost 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 A2; Tuten and Zubizarreta; ANB First edi