Beschreibung:

FROST, ROBERT]. BURNETT, WHIT, editor . America's 93 Greatest Living Authors Present This Is My Best. Over 150 Self-Chosen...Masterpieces, together with Their Reasons for Their Selections. New York: The Dial Press 1942. Thick 8vo, original buckram, dust jacket (a little frayed), black cloth slipcase. FIRST EDITION, contains (pp. 277-8) Frost's piece "Robert Frost: Why he selected Sixteen Poems" (the poems follow on pp. 278-292), INSCRIBED BY FROST at top of p. 277: "Robert Frost to Earle Bernheimer," with a one-word correction by Frost in the text. Laid in: (1) A manuscript list in the hand of Kathleen Morrison bearing a list of a number of Frost's poems for possible inclusion in this anthology, 2 pages, 8vo , with a six-word marginal annotation by Frost; (2) Two fragments, including signed closing, from a Frost autograph letter signed to Bernheimer regarding his contribution, 2 oblongs. [ With :] ROBERT FROST. Autograph manuscript signed of his "presenting" piece for This Is My Best (the above anthology). [Probably Ripton, Vt., 1942]. 4 pages, oblong 8vo, in blue ink on rectos, idiotically tipped with scotch tape by Bernheimer to the front free endpaper of the above volume (the tape at left margins not covering words), creased from folding, a first draft with extensive revisions by Frost , signed and inscribed by him at end to Bernheimer. "...I have made this selection much as I made the one for my first book A Boy's Will and my second book North of Boston looking backward over the accumulation of years to see how many poems I could find toward[s] some one meaning it might seem absurd to have had in advance, but it would be all right to accept from fate after the fact. The interest, the pastime, was to learn if there had been any divinity shaping my ends and I had been building better than I knew..." An excellent (and rare) Frost manuscript in which he discusses his life and his poetry. (4)