FROST, Robert.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

A Boy's Will. First edition, number 131 of 135 copies signed by the author on the title page for Chiswick Book Shop, New York, in 1943. Frost signed their copies of his debut book after their proprietor Herman Cohen found 135 copies from the second issue, binding "D", among the stock he purchased from the closed shop Dunster House.Unable to find willing American publishers, Frost moved to London in 1912 in the hopes his new poetic voice would find greater favour abroad. Other Imagists, such as F. S. Flint and Ezra Pound, soon helped him secure a deal with David Nutt to publish 1,000 copies of A Boy's Will. Nutt sold 350 copies in the first issue before declaring bankruptcy shortly after the war. The remaining stock of second issue copies were sold by Simpkin & Marshall in a variety of bindings. This copy is in binding "D", identified by the four-petalled flowers on the front cover.In 1921, Frost's friend J. W. Haines informed him that the unsold stock was in danger of being pulped. The poet immediately responded by saying he would send "all the money I can raise to buy in those poor old first editions of mine". Haines transported them to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1923, where they were sold by Dunster House for the next 20 years until Chiswick Book Shop bought out their stock.The title page verso is stamped "Printed in Great Britain" in 686 of the second issue copies, as here.

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