The First Issue of Robert Frost's A Boy's Will, In Extremely Scarce Binding

Robert Frost. A BOY'S WILL. London: David Nutt, 1913. First edition; first issue. In cream vellum-paper boards, stamped in red on upper board. 8vo; ix, [1], 50, [2]pp. One of likely fewer than 350 copies of the first issue.

The publishing history of A Boy's Will is extremely complicated, partly due to the bankruptcy of the Nutt publishing house after WWI. The first edition of the book was published in two issues with a total of 1000 printed copies. No more than 350 of these (and possibly as low as 284 per Crane) comprise the first issue which was bound for Nutt in two binding variants, including cloth (variant A) and cream vellum (variant B), which were for sale between 1913 and 1917. The remaining copies, comprising the second issue, were also bound in two variants, with the majority of them bound in England and then sent to the United States for sale at a Massachusetts bookshop in the early 1920s.

This first issue copy of A Boy's Will was bound in variant B, which is the scarcer of the two first issue bindings with likely only a very small number in existence. Crane A2.

7 7/16 x 5 in.

A Boy's Will was Frost's first commercially published book, and the first of his two books published in England while he was living there from 1912 until 1915. While Frost's Twilight was technically his first book, printed in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1894 just two years after his high school graduation, it consisted of only two printed copies, one of which Frost kept and later destroyed.

Boards with light edge wear, very mild scuffing, slight creasing at the joints, and darkened spine; endpapers with minor grime and toning, with tiny spots at the rear; light wear at pgs. 45 and 46 and two leaves with a very minor closed tear; a very good plus copy. A truly remarkable example of this first issue, making a rare appearance at auction in what is likely its scarcest binding.