A Boy's Will
Robert Frost
1913, London
 
First edition, first printing, first issue binding (of which there were 350 copies or less from the overall edition of 1000) of Frost's first published book. Original bronze pebble grain cloth lettered in gilt. Covers with some sporadic spotting, corners bumped, internally quite clean. Overall a Near Fine, solid copy housed in custom folding case. I Vow to Thee, My Country (British song based on a poem by Sir Cecil Spring Rice circa 1921) written on rear end papers in contemporary hand - presumably by a very patriotic, poetry loving Englishman.
 
"The author's first book, published in England where the 40 year old poet was living in a Bungalow at Beaconsfield. He had published an earlier work in 1894 called Twilight. Five Poems in an edition of 2 copies one for his future bride, Elinor White, and one for himself. He destroyed his own copy. The remaining copy is at the University of Virginia. Frost is closely linked with the New England region, he attempted to catch 'the abstract vitality of our speech' in his poetry. However his first two collections were published in London - A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914). He and his wife and children had moved to England in 1912 after he had been unable to make a living in a variety of occupations (including cobbling) or to find a publisher for his poems in America. Through his friendship with the Imagist poet F. S. Flint he made important contacts in London like Ezra Pound, Edward Thomas, T. E. Hulme and Georgian poets like Lascelles Abercrombie and Wilfrid Gibson --these were essential to Frost's publishing success. Books of poetry were usually reviewed by critics who know the author (then and now.) When Ezra Pound's favourable review of A Boy's Will appeared in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse in May of 1913, Frost reacted with mixed emotions. He knew that Pound's review would be crucial in influencing other critics in England, but he disagreed with Pound's assessment of his poetry as simple and untutored. Norman Douglas wrote, in a review, of his 'simple woodland philosophy' but there was a darker side to his poems, a combative and troubled spirit--Lionel Trilling famously called him 'a poet of terror' at a speech given on Frost's 85th birthday." (Bookride)