Estampes

1959 · Best.-Nr. 008606 — New York: Henry Holt and Company 1959. First edition first printing. Hardcover. This strikingly clean jacketed copy of the first edition first printing of Robert Frost’s 1959 collection of “Favorite Poems for Young Readers” is signed by him "Robert Frost" on the title page just above his printed name. This collection takes its title from the words repeated at the end of each stanza of this book's first poem "The Pasture" first published as the prefatory to North of Boston in 1914. Of this collection the publisher said Frost "has gathered a group of his poems to be read to and by young people. To Robert Frost a great-grandfather with a remarkable number of small friends this was a labor of love.” Frost dedicated the volume to his mother “Belle Moodie Frost who knew as a teacher that no poetry was good for children that wasn’t equally good for their elders.” Evoking Frost’s famous poem “Mending Wall” Frost’s friend Edward Hyde Cox 1914-1988 who contributes a Foreword to this volume said of Frost that he had “never added a single stone to the wall that so often separates age from youth.” Prevalent among the 51 poems herein is Frost's gently subversive inclination to write verse that is superficially accessible "lovely dark and deep" upon sounding. This is a handsome book bound in orange-yellow linen cloth with a vignette of a bird on a fence post stamped in black on the lower right front cover corner and spine print stamped in black with a red acorn and leaf device between at the spine's center. The contents feature wood engravings by Thomas W. Nason and are bound with endpapers of heavy light gray wove paper and red and yellow head and tail bands. The dust jacket printed on beige laid paper features a wood engraving of birches spanning the lower front face spine and extending onto the rear face. The rear face prominently features Yousuf Karsh's famous portrait photograph of Frost. Condition is truly fine in a truly fine dust jacket. The illustrated cloth binding is immaculately clean and bright with sharp corners and only the most trivial hints of shelf wear to extremities. The contents are likewise pristine with no spotting soiling toning or previous ownership marks. "FIRST EDITION" is so stated on the title page verso. The contents retain a pleasingly stiff feel The dust jacket is crisp bright clean and entirely complete with no loss or tears and retaining the original "$3.00" upper front flap price. We note only a hint of wrinkling to the spine heel and a touch of soiling to the lower rear face. The jacket is protected beneath a clear removable archival cover. Publisher's statements are often hyperbolic. In this case the dust jacket's front flap description of Robert Frost as "America's beloved poet ageless and for the ages" was and remains more accurate than advertising. Before this volume was published on 26 March 1959 Robert Frost 1874-1963 reached the age of eighty-five. His stature had risen to an apex arguably unequalled by any American poet since. Frost had long-since won all of his still-unrivaled four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry 1924 1931 1937 and 1943. He spent his final years as “the most highly esteemed American poet of the twentieth century” with an accumulating hoard of academic and civic honors. Two years before his death he became the first poet to read in the program of a U.S. Presidential inauguration Kennedy January 1961. Reference: Crane A39; Tuten and Zubizarreta; ANB Henry Holt and Company hardcover