Books

First edition, first impression, in the rare dust jacket, this a touching association copy: from the library of Cornelius Weygandt (1897-1957), a professor of literature at the University of Pennsylvania and a close friend of Robert Frost, with his ownership inscription on the title page, dated 6 December 1920. Weygandt was an early admirer of Thomas's writings and praised his work to Frost, himself one of Thomas's closest friends. Frost would sometimes pass Weygandt's thoughts to Thomas himself, mentioning in a letter to Thomas in 1916 that "one of my professors at the University of Pennsylvania was liking the 'perfect texture' of your prose just the other day - thought he had read all you had written" (Sheehy, p. 495). Frost meant to introduce his two friends but Thomas died in 1917 before they could meet; Frost wrote to Weygandt to inform him that the poet "was killed by a shell at Arras on Easter Monday - if I can make you know how much that means to me. I'm glad you liked so much of his poetry. I had just been telling him about your letter in a letter he will never see... I meant to have you know him" (Sheehy, p. 551). Eckert notes that the book is "obviously a wartime production, of poor paper and binding"; this copy is in an unrecorded state, with no advertisements at the rear. Octavo. Original grey-beige boards, printed paper label to spine, cream endpapers, untrimmed. Boards lightly bumped, contents toned as usual, else clean and unmarked; jacket marked and rubbed, edges slightly chipped and worn with some loss to spine, short closed tear to front fold, flaps without price as issued: a very good copy in very good jacket. Eckert, pp. 245-6. Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, and Robert Faggen (eds), The Letters of Robert Frost: Volume 1, 1886-1920, 2014.