RARE AND IMPORTANT FIRST ISSUE OF FROST’S FIRST PUBLISHED BOOK, A BOY’S WILL, INSCRIBED BY FROST

FROST, Robert. A Boy's Will. London: David Nutt, 1913. Octavo, original bronzed brown pebbled cloth, gilt-stamped front cover, uncut. Housed in a custom cloth chemise and half morocco slipcase.

One of the rarest of all Frost printings: the true first issue of A Boy’s Will, his first published book, the first and second issues of which only 284 copies are believed to have been bound up and sold, inscribed by Frost: “Russell —-, from Robert Lee Frost, 1945.” A lovely copy in the very scarce Binding A, desirable signed by Frost.

In September 1912 Frost took his family to England and there found a publisher, David Nutt, who was willing to bring out his first book of poetry. "The poems in A Boy's Will are short lyrics, many of them love poems for Elinor [Frost's wife]. Although a few have the inversions and poetic language associated with 19th-century poetry, others, such as 'Mowing' and 'Storm Fear,' indicate the experiments with voice tone and colloquial diction that distinguish Frost's great poetry. The lyrics are arranged to chronicle a boy's maturation from idealism and self-centeredness to a realization of love and an acceptance of loss. In the first edition Frost included prose glosses for all but two of the 32 poems. Although these often provide an ironic perspective upon the immature boy, they were omitted from later reprints" (DAB).
One thousand sets of sheets of the book were originally printed, according to the report of the printer, Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co. No more than 350 copies, but likely only about 284 copies, were bound up for distribution by Nutt between April 1913 and the spring of 1921. Copies bound for Nutt before April 1, 1913 were bound in binding A—bronzed brown pebbled cloth—by the Leighton-Straker Bookbinding Co. [the present copy]. Those in binding B, cream vellum-paper boards, were bound and issued during World War I. In 1921 Nutt went bankrupt and the remaining sheets ?were in danger of being reduced to pulp,? so Frost set out to ?raise all the money I can to buy in those poor old first editions of mine? Some of my friends think they might be worth something? in America (Crane, A2). All of the unbound sheets were bound in bindings C (100 copies for Simpkin Marshall) and D (the remainder of the copies) and sent to Dunster House Bookshop in Cambridge, along with unsold volumes in binding B.

Early ink presentation inscription on the front free endpaper by Sydney Hayes Cox, beneath which Frost has penned ?circa 1913,? followed by his own inscription, dated 1945. Professor Sydney Hayes Cox (1885-1952) taught creative writing at Dartmouth and Bread Loaf—where Frost was a mainstay—and was a close friend of Frost's (New York Times). He also wrote a biography of the poet entitled Robert Frost: Original Ordinary Man (1929) as well as several books and many articles on the craft of writing.

Fine condition.