L i t e r a t u r e 36 “The Most Highly Esteemed American Poet Of The 20th Century”: Signed Limited Edition Of Frost’s Complete Poems 39. FROST, Robert. The Complete Poems of Robert Frost. New York, 1950. Two volumes. Tall octavo, original dark blue cloth, slipcase. $3600. Signed limited edition, one of 1500 copies signed by Frost, additionally signed by famed typographer Bruce Rogers and New England illustrator Thomas W. Nason. “The most highly esteemed American poet of the 20th century… [In 1957] T.S. Eliot toasted Frost as ‘perhaps the most eminent, the most distinguished Anglo-American poet now living,’ whose ‘kind of local feeling in poetry… can go without universality: the relation of Dante to Florence… of Robert Frost to New England’” (ANB). Thomas W. Nason, known as “the poet engraver of New England,” was chosen to produce the numerous delightful wood-engravings in this edition. “Both Nason and Frost connected with and appealed to a broad spectrum of the American public through their imagery of rural life in New England” (Florence Griswold Museum). Without scarce and fragile original glassine dust jackets. LEC 208. Expert repairs to slipcase, books fine. “Hither Came Conan, The Cimmerian… To Tread The Jeweled Thrones Of The Earth Under His Sandaled Feet”: First Editions Of Gnome Press’ Complete Conan Books 40. HOWARD, Robert E. The Conan series. New York, 1950-57. Together, seven volumes. Octavo, original cloth, dust jackets. $6000. First editions of all seven books about Conan—Robert E. Howard’s iconic, foe-crushing sword-and-sorcery hero—published by Gnome Press, all in original dust jackets. A lovely and desirable set. Robert E. Howard “set the most important precedents of all for the future evolution of imaginative fiction in America” (Anatomy of Wonder, 35). In the 17 stories about Conan, the primeval warrior king, that he sold to Weird Tales between 1932 and his suicide in 1936, Howard created a character “whose exuberance is almost irresistible… He is a fomenter, a shaker of the world… That Conan represented a wish-fulfillment for Howard has been generally assumed… and there is no denying the pathos inherent in the gap between the world-bestriding Conan and his creator, who hardly left Cross Plains, Texas… But there is always the saving raw action, the exorbitant young world awaiting the blow, the feel of the wind of the story. In that, he remains nonpareil” (Clute & Grant, 482-83). “Conan… has become one of the myth figures of our time… This is the original, unadulterated Sword-and-Sorcery, and as such it has been extremely influential” (Pringle, Modern Fantasy, 42-43). Mighty Conan has waged his violent way to the silver screen several times, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984), and in Conan the Barbarian (2011) by Jason Momoa. Books with mild embrowning to later volumes’ text blocks, cloth generally fresh. Dust jackets bright (light sunning to spine of Conan the Conqueror) with only minor wear to some spine feet. An excellent set, desirable in such wonderful condition.
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