J O N K E R S R A R E B O O K S
P R E S E N T A T I O N C O P I E S & M A N U S C R I P T S
FROST TO WILFRED GIBSON
FROST TO WILFRID GIBSON 25. FROST, Robert NORTH OF BOSTON David Nutt, 1914.
24. FROST, Robert A BOY’S WILL David Nutt, 1913. First edition, first issue, binding A. Original bronze pebbled cloth, titled in gilt to upper cover, edges uncut. Inscribed to his close friend and fellow Dymock poet Wilfrid W. Gibson: “W.W.G. from R.F. Sept. 1913.” Housed in custom cloth chemise and slipcase. A very good copy, the spine a little faded, and with occasional spotting internally. [40840] £17,500 An exceptional presentation copy of Frost’s first book. When A Boy’s Will was published in March 1913, Gibson and Frost had not yet met, though Frost had read Gibson’s Daily Bread (1910) and Fires (1912) with some admiration. At the time Gibson was a poet of some standing, and was living in a small room above Harold Monro’s Poetry Book- shop. He read Frost’s debut collection on publication, and later that year wrote to Frost and told him to come to the Bookshop and show him some new poems. Their first meeting and early friendship is memorialised in Gibson’s poem ‘The First Meeting’, as well as in this book, inscribed for Gibson by Frost in the September. The following year Gib- son would convince Frost to move to Dymock, and was the key node connecting him to Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, John Drinkwater and Lascelles Abercrombie. Immediately before the move, Frost wrote to Sidney Marsh confessing “I have no friend here like Wilfrid Gibson” (March 1914). Of roughly 1000 copies of the first edition, approximately 350 were issued by Nutt in bindings A and B, before the company went into bankruptcy after the First World War. Copies in the first issue in the primary binding are uncommon, and presentation copies of such literary magnitude are rare. PROVENANCE: Wilfrid W. Gibson (1878-1962; presentation inscription from the author); William E. Stockhausen (sold at his sale, 14 December 1974, lot 704).
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 Dy- mock 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. [40841] £12,500 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 presenta- tion copies with such literary magnitude are rare. PROVENANCE: Wilfrid W. Gibson (1878-1962; presentation inscription from the author); William E. Stockhausen (sold at his sale, 14 December 1974, lot 711).
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