13-page Frost Typescript, Signed

Hard Not to Be King [Early Typescript of the poem, "How hard it is to keep from being king when it's in you and in the situation"]

Frost, Robert

Publication: [1950].

Notes: A very scarce original typescript of a long poem by Robert Frost, running thirteen pages with a handwritten change to the title on the first leaf and an inscription on the last. Frost manuscripts are frequently only a page of two long.

Frost wrote the poem in 1950 used this typescript to read it on May 25, 1951, "as the Blashfield Address of the American Academy of Arts and Letters" (quoted from the first published edition, issued as a signed, limited edition by House of Books in 1951). At the top of this copy of the poem, Frost crossed out part of the title and renamed the poem, "Hard to Keep from Being King." The poet also adds, "As read at the American Academy." On the last page, Frost signed and presented this typescript to his friend Reginald Cook, the head of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.

The poem appeared, with a few changes to the text, in Frost's last collection, In the Clearing, under the title, "How hard it is to keep from being king when it's in you and in the situation." This is a near quote of a line near the bottom of the first page.

8 by 10-1/2 inches. Stapled twice in the upper left corner. The pages were typed on a "Mill" typewriter, typically used by the military for communiqués and for civilian telegrams. Frost probably used one here because his eyesight was failing and in the days before word processors, Mill typewriters used a 9 point font, which was larger than a standard typewriter.

Edition + Condition: Ribbon copy typescript (meaning not a carbon copy). Near fine, complete. With one handwritten change (inserting an apostrophe) and at least one typed correction. Signed by Frost. This is a working draft of one of Frost's longest poems and one of his more important late poems, a metaphor on free will and betrayal (according to Frost's biographer Henry Hart in The Life of Robert Frost, p. 342).

Item No: #364799

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