Unique Robert Frost and A. E. Housman Collections to Auction

Going under the hammer at Sotheby’s New York's Fine Books and Manuscripts sale on June 26 are three major lots focusing on Robert Frost, A. E. Housman, and William Blake.

The David Lowenherz Collection of Robert Frost represents a comprehensive collections of books, letters, and ephemera including Christmas cards covering the entirety of Frost’s career put together over more than 40 years. No complete collection of Frost’s printed poetry exists, partly because his first, privately printed work, Twilight, only exists in a single copy but Sotheby's say that a better collection than this could not easily be put together. 

It includes first, inscribed, limited, variant and other distinctive editions and issues of the poetry in books - for example, 11 various copies of the first published book, A Boy’s Will - broadsides, periodicals, Christmas cards, and a profusion of other printing. The printed poetry is the highlight of the collection but it is significantly supplemented by letters and manuscripts, photographs, and other ephemera. Nearly 200 pieces in the collection are signed by Frost, the greater number of them accompanied by a further inscription and very often by an autograph transcription of, or quotation from, one his poems. The estimate is $400,000 - $600,000.

Meanwhile, The Thomas E. Minckler Collection of A. E. Housman is probably the most significant collection to appear at auction. It includes an extensive collection of letters and books by A Shropshire Lad author Housman (1859–1936), plus several manuscripts and other material, all providing an incisive and detailed perspective on the second half of his life, when his fame as the author of A Shropshire Lad outran all his considerable achievements as a classicist.


The core of the collection is the more than 100 autograph letters signed, a number of which are unpublished. The great majority of them were written to Housman’s younger brother Laurence, and his publisher and friend, Grant Richards The estimate is $300,000 - $400,000.

Highlights include a very uncommon presentation Last Poems that is accompanied by an autograph letter by Housman castigating book collectors, and the autograph manuscript of poem XVII of Last Poems, Astronomy, partly inspired by the death in the Boer War of Housman’s brother George.

The third element in the Three Poets sale focuses on the Rothschild copy of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience, estimated to fetch between $1,200,000 and $1,800,000.