The Collected Prose of Robert Frost - Hardcover

Frost, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067402463X ISBN 13: 9780674024632

Publisher: Belknap Press, 2008

Synopsis

During his lifetime, Robert Frost notoriously resisted collecting his prose--going so far as to halt the publication of one prepared compilation and to "lose" the transcripts of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures he delivered at Harvard in 1936. But for all his qualms, Frost conceded to his son that "you can say a lot in prose that verse won't let you say," and that the prose he had written had in fact "made good competition for [his] verse." This volume, the first critical edition of Robert Frost's prose, allows readers and scholars to appreciate the great American author's forays beyond poetry, and to discover in the prose that he did make public--in newspapers, magazines, journals, speeches, and books--the wit, force, and grace that made his poetry famous.

The Collected Prose of Robert Frost offers an extensive and illuminating body of work, ranging from juvenilia--Frost's contributions to his high school Bulletin--to the charming "chicken stories" he wrote as a young family man for The Eastern Poultryman and Farm Poultry, to such famous essays as "The Figure a Poem Makes" and the speeches and contributions to magazines solicited when he had become the Grand Old Man of American letters. Gathered, annotated, and cross-referenced by Mark Richardson, the collection is based on extensive work in archives of Frost's manuscripts. It provides detailed notes on the author's habits of composition and on important textual issues and includes much previously unpublished material. It is a book of boundless appeal and importance, one that should find a home on the bookshelf of anyone interested in Frost.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Richardson is Professor of English at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan.

Reviews

Starred Review. Frost was a highly prolific if disorganized, writer of prose, penning pieces for newspapers, magazines and events that were never collected in book form during his life. Following The Notebooks of Robert Frost (2007), this volume brings together all the prose written for publication by America's most famous poet—some previously unpublished, some long available in other editions—along with helpful notes by Richardson, professor of English at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. While many of these pieces are brief and of interest mostly to Frost scholars—such as a letter to the editor of Poetry praising a recent issue or multiple responses to magazines asking Frost to list his favorite books (1—The Old Testament./ 2— 'The Odyssey,' by Homer)—there are many major pieces too, such as the well-known The Figure a Poem Makes, which includes Frost's famous statement, No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. Also included is The Last Refinement of Subject Matter: Vocal Imagination, a treatise on the sentence as musical notation: The sentence must never leave the reader in doubt for a moment as to how the voice is to be placed in it. Frost's earthy voice and rigorous intellect are on full display in this essential book for poetry lovers.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067402463X
• ISBN 13: 9780674024632
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416
• Editor: Richardson Mark