About this Item
This original Robert Frost 1949 Christmas Card is the first stand-alone publication of this poem. Of 3,600 copies printed for 14 different names, this is one of the 225 printed for the poet himself. Most important, this copy is inscribed by Frost in four lines on the front cover. Frost wrote "For Russell Alberts" directly above the red printed line "Holiday Greetings from Robert Frost" and "with" directly beside the printed line. Below, in two lines, Frost wrote "and the rest of the company - | fourteen imprints for compendium". Alberts was apparently an enthusiastic collector of Frostiana and here Frost teases with his inscription: "fourteen imprints for compendium" - this, a reference to the 14 separate imprints of this card thirteen printed with "Holiday Greetings from" someone other than this copy s "Robert Frost". The binding features pale blue laid paper wrappers printed in red and folded over card, the binding wire-stitched to the contents by a single, centerfold staple. The contents are printed in dark gray on white wove paper. Condition is truly fine. The binding is immaculately clean, complete, and firmly attached with no reportable wear. The original binding staple is uncorroded. The contents are immaculate, with no soiling or spotting.With the permission of Frost and his publishers, in 1929 The Spiral Press began printing an annual Robert Frost Christmas Card featuring one of his poems. The tradition continued until 1962, Frost's final Christmas. Each annual Christmas poem publication was printed with varying names on the title page to accommodate their being sent by various Frost publishers, artists, and important friends. This copy is one of those printed for Frost himself, the imprint "Holiday Greetings from Robert Frost" printed on the title page. Naturally, collecting every separate imprint for each year s Christmas card is quite a challenging task for a collector."On a Tree Fallen Across the Road" was first published in Farm and Fireside (October, 1921) and included in the first of Frost s collections to win a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, New Hampshire (1923) with the subtitle "To hear us talk". The poem s fallen tree "is a barrier that causes reflection, much like the obstacles in "Mending Wall" and "Two Look at Two". It says something about the poet s enduring regard for the piece that he chose it for his 1949 Christmas poem to friends and associates.By late 1949, when he inscribed this Christmas greeting, Robert Frost (1874-1963) was in his final decade and a half of life, which he spent as "the most highly esteemed American poet of the twentieth century" with an accumulating hoard of academic and civic honors. Six years had passed since he had won his still-to-this-day-unrivalled fourth Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. This is all the more remarkable given that he did not publish his first volume of poetry until he was nearly 40 years old. He would continue writing, publishing, and "barding around" (his term) until his end. 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 B23; Tuten and Zubizarreta; ANB.
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