ROBERT FROST’S NEW HAMPSHIRE, INSCRIBED BY HIM WITH A POEM FROM THE BOOK

FROST, Robert. New Hampshire. A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes. New York: Henry Holt, (1924). Octavo, original half green cloth, uncut. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $6000.

First edition, third printing, issued a year after the first printing, inscribed by Frost with lines from the poem "I Will Sing You One-O": "The clock struck one/ In that grave one/ They spoke of the sun/ And moon and stars/ Saturn and Mars/ And Jupiter/ x x x x x/ Their solemn peals/ Were not their own/ They spoke for the clock/ With whose vast wheels/ Theirs interlock/ Robert Frost/ For Edwin T. Bowden Jr.''.

New Hampshire contains a number of Frost's most famous poems: "Fire and Ice," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," and "Nothing Gold Can Stay." Frost, who lived much of his life in New Hampshire, said that he wrote the title poem, a poetic tribute to his state, in one night. "Using Horace's satirical discourses, the Sermones, as a model, Frost composed a long poem that, according to Lawrence Thompson, 'scatter[s] friendly banter through a rhapsody of anecdotes, exempla, dialogue, self-appraisal, self-disparagements, epigrams, and proverbs.' By way of such diverse poetic modes he praises the economic self-sufficiency of New Hampshire" (Robert Frost Encyclopedia, 230-31). With four woodcuts by J.J. Lankes. Without original dust jacket. Crane A6. The recipient of this copy was a long-time professor of English at the University of Texas.

Interior fine, cloth with light wear, mainly to corners. A near-fine inscribed copy.