INSCRIBED TO WILFRID GIBSON
North of Boston
David Nutt, 1914.
First edition, first issue, binding A. Original green cloth, upper cover and spine titled gilt, top edge trimmed, other edges uncut. Inscribed to his close friend and fellow Dymock poet Wilfrid W. Gibson: "Wilfrid Gibson from Robert Frost". Housed in custom cloth chemise and slipcase. A very good copy indeed, some light marks to the upper cover.
An exceptional presentation copy.
By the time Frost met Gibson in the autumn of 1913, he was putting the finishing touches to this collection, and brought many of the poems in it to their first meeting. Gibson was impressed, and the two quickly became friends. In March of the following year, Gibson recommended Frost move out from Beaconsfield to Gloucestershire, and join the community of poets he had established there with Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, John Drinkwater and Lascelles Abercrombie.
North Of Boston contains some of Frost's greatest early work, including the poems Mending Wall and The Death Of The Hired Man. Reflecting on this a few years later, Frost would write that North Of Boston "was the book that got me invited down to live with those fellows in the country" (Letter to Amy Lowell, 1917).
As in the publication of A Boy's Will, approximately 350 copies were bound up in the first binding in 1914 to be sold by David Nutt in London, from a total edition of 1000. Contemporary presentation copies with such literary magnitude are rare.
PROVENANCE: Wilfrid W. Gibson (1878-1962; presentation inscription from the author); William E. Stockhausen (sold at Sothebys, 14 December 1974, lot 711).
Stock ID: 40841
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