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This is the first printing of the 1928 second (first expanded) edition of Frost s Selected Poems, notable both for being well-preserved and warmly signed and inscribed by the author contemporary to publication. Frost s inscription is inked in black in four lines on the title page: "For Thomas Foster Jr | from his friend | Robert Frost | 1929". Published on 19 November 1928, this second, expanded edition of Selected Poems is a handsome production, bound in a quarter dark green linen cloth printed in gilt over boards covered in pale, gray-green paper in a pattern simulating laid paper, with Frost s gilt facsimile signature on the lower right front cover. The contents were printed on rough wove cream paper with top edges stained green and bound with green and yellow head and tail bands. The dust jacket, printed in darker green on pale green paper, features a portrait photograph of Robert Frost by Doris Ullman on the front face.This inscribed copy is in very good plus condition in a good dust jacket. The binding is square, clean, bright, tight, and unfaded, the corners still sharp despite light shelf wear to the bottom edges. The contents are modestly age-toned, but otherwise quite clean. "First printing" is unequivocal, helpfully printed on the title page verso. We find no previous ownership marks other than the author s inscription. The green-stained top edges are uniformly dulled. A hint of trivial spotting is confined to the endpapers, which also show differential toning corresponding to the dust jacket flaps, confirming that this copy has spent life jacketed. The dust jacket, which tended to brittle and fracture with age, is substantially complete, with various minor losses, short closed tears, and associated wrinkling to the spine ends and face edges. The most significant loss is to a depth of .75 inch at the upper rear joint, claiming the titular "SE" in "SELECTED POEMS". The jacket shows light soiling and minor spine toning and is now protected beneath a clear, removable, archival cover.The first edition of Selected Poems was published on 15 March 1923. "Frost was originally against the idea of a volume of selected poems; he wanted his new books of poetry to have priority, and he believed reviewers would see such a collection only as a plea for attention. In contrast, reviews primarily praised Selected Poems and found the volume important as the first selection of his published work." By 1928, Frost s stature had grown and considerations changed. This first printing of the second, revised and expanded edition of Selected Poems was published on 19 November 1928, the same day as publication of West-Running Brook. The volume contains fifty-seven poems arranged by Frost himself, selected from A Boy s Will, North of Boston, Mountain Interval, and New Hampshire. Successive editions of Selected Poems followed in 1934 and 1963.Iconic American poet Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963), the quintessential poetic voice of New England, was actually born in San Francisco and first published in England. In 1912, Frost moved to England with his wife and children, where publication of A Boy s Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914) led to critical recognition. Accolades met Frost s return to America at the end of 1914. A 1917 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," his term for "saying" poems in a conversational performance." By the time this second edition of Selected Poems was published in 1928, Frost had already claimed the first of his eventual (and still unrivaled) four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry (1924, 1931, 1937, and 1943). Frost would spend 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 A9; Tuten and Zubizarreta; AN.
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