"THE MOST HIGHLY ESTEEMED AMERICAN POET OF THE 20TH CENTURY": SIGNED LIMITED EDITION OF FROST'S COMPLETE POEMS

FROST, Robert. The Complete Poems of Robert Frost. New York: Limited Editions Club, 1950. Two volumes. Tall octavo, original dark blue cloth, morocco spine labels, uncut, original slipcase. $3600.

Signed limited edition, number 173 of 1500 copies signed by Frost, praised by T.S. Eliot as "perhaps the most eminent, the most distinguished Anglo-American poet now living," additionally signed by famed typographer Bruce Rogers and New England illustrator Thomas W. Nason.

"The most highly esteemed American poet of the 20th century… [In 1957] T.S. Eliot toasted Frost as 'perhaps the most eminent, the most distinguished Anglo-American poet now living,' whose 'kind of local feeling in poetry… can go without universality: the relation of Dante to Florence… of Robert Frost to New England'" (ANB). Appropriately, then, the 80-year-old Bruce Rogers, when approached to plan this book, insisted on an illustrator "who knows New England and can turn out the simple, home-spun kind of illustrations which are required for the work of a simple, homespun poet" (LEC Monthly Letter). Thomas W. Nason, known as "the poet engraver of New England," was chosen to produce the numerous delightful wood-engravings in this edition. "Both Nason and Frost connected with and appealed to a broad spectrum of the American public through their imagery of rural life in New England" (Florence Griswold Museum). Without scarce and fragile original glassine dust jackets. LEC 208. See Crane A35.

Slight mark to spine of Volume I. A very nearly fine copy.