New Hampshire, A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes by Frost, Robert; Lankes, J.J. (Illustrations) - 1923

New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1923. First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine/good +. Lankes, J.J.. First printing, octavo size, 124 pp. Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963) justly gained fame during his lifetime, and is, to date, the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes; in addition, he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960.

This work, "New Hampshire", would win him his first Pulitzer, and contains the first printing of "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening"; it also contains the well-known poems "Fire and Ice" and "Nothing Gold Can Stay", among the many others.

With three full-page woodcut illustrations by Julius John Lankes (1884-1960), who trained as a draftsman before discovering his artistic ability in 1917, when "using a V-cutting tool intended for cross-hatching grips on gunstocks, and a piece of wood from an apple tree blown down by a storm, he cut his first woodblock titled 'Flying Gosling'." (n.b., quote from Wiki.) His career as an illustrator would eventually include works by many well-known authors, including Robert Frost, Sherwood Anderson, and Beatrix Potter.

___DESCRIPTION: Boards covered with green laid paper, the front board with a gold paper label with black lettering, evergreen cloth shelfback with gilt lettering, decoration and publisher's device, fore- and bottom edges rough-cut, mottled tan endpapers, one of the three full-page woodcuts serves as the frontis, the other two as frontises for "Notes" and "Grace Notes", with a small vignette closing the book; octavo size (8 3/4" by 5 7/8"), pagination: [i-viii] ix-x [1-2] 3-113 [114, vignette page]. In the publisher's dust jacket with the printed price of $2.50 towards the bottom of the front flap (above the publisher's name and address) and on the spine, printed in dark green on light green paper, the frontis woodcut reproduced on the front panel.

___CONDITION: Volume is near fine, with clean boards, straight corners with a modicum of rubbing to the bottom corners, a strong, square text block with solid hinges, the interior is clean and bright, and entirely free of prior owner markings; a few prior bookseller pencilled markings on the verso of the front free endpaper, a modicum of rubbing to the head and tail of the spine, and a shallow horizontal crease to the front board which we believe occurred during production as there is absolutely no evidence of actual damage to the board. The dust jacket is a bit better than good, entire, with sunning to the spine, some edgewear along the top with some loss at the head of the spine (including loss of the letters "New Hamp"), and minor edgewear to the bottom.

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