ROBERT FROST A BIBLIOGRAPHY
By W. B. Shubrick Clymer and Charles R. Green. Foreword by David Lambuth. Published in 1937 at Amherst, Massachusetts by the Jones Library, Inc. p. 158. 13.25.
Collectors of the works of Robert Frost '96, and they are legion, will welcome this long awaited bibliography announced for publication almost two years ago. Robert Frost is America's foremost poet and this is the first complete bibliography of his works to be issued. Some critics feel that a bibliography because it is out of date the moment it appears, if the author is living, should not be issued during his lifetime. The authors of this work feel, however, that they have been especially fortunate in issuing this bibliography at this time for both Mr. and Mrs. Frost have helped them in many troublesome details.
The work contains a foreword of four pages by Professor David Lambuth in which he says "Other poets have spokenwisely, courageously, poignantly—about living. At its greatest, the speech of Robert Frost is not about living—it is living. This is a strange power, and in it resides the majesty of the man. Not to have felt this is not to have known his nature."
Sixty of the one hundred and fifty-eight pages of this book are devoted to collations of the separate Frost publications. Very carefully and in great detail are described the various points of the many issues of A Boy's Will and North of Boston, items which have puzzled many collectors because of the variants in binding, etc. Then follows a section devoted to first appearances of poems in periodicals, followed by one of first appearances in books. Many of Frost's poems after periodical publication first appeared in book form in various anthologies. We later learn that Frost's first prose appearance was in the Lawrence High School Bulletin. Some of his poems first saw light in this same publication. Doubtless these bulletins are among the rarest Frost items. A large section of the book is devoted to a selected list of essays and reviews relating to Frost and his work which have appeared in newspaper and periodical form as well as in book form. At the end is an index of all his published poems.
The compilers have done an excellent piece of work, the result of many laborious hours of hard research. Of the 650 copies printed the first 150 were printed on handmade paper and signed by Mr. Frost.
