WHITTIER, John Greenleaf.
Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl.
FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE — page 52 numbered. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866.
12mo (approx. 7¼ × 4¾ in.). 52 pp. Steel-engraved frontispiece portrait of Whittier by H. W. Smith, with tissue guard; wood-engraved title-page vignette of the Whittier homestead by J. P. Davis & Speer after a design by Harry Fenn, with historiated headpiece and decorative initial; half-title present. Publisher's green cloth, gilt-stamped on the spine and front board. BAL 21862; Grolier American 100, 73. A very good copy, with wear to the extremities (more so at the spine ends), light abrasion to the spine affecting the gilt, dampstaining to the rear board and last two leaves, and a contemporary owner name.
The first issue is identified by the printed page number "52" at the foot of the final leaf — a number dropped during the original print run, leaving the second issue with the page unnumbered. The numbered first state is genuinely uncommon; the second issue and the later "thousand"-numbered printings are far more frequently encountered.
John Greenleaf Whittier's Snow-Bound was the bestselling book of his career and the work that secured his place among the Fireside Poets. Published on February 17, 1866, less than a year after the end of the Civil War, the poem is a narrative reminiscence of three winter days at the Whittier family homestead in Haverhill, Massachusetts, when, in the poet's Quaker childhood, the household was snowbound and gathered around the fire to tell stories. A sound, attractive copy of one of the central documents of nineteenth-century American domestic poetry.
SKU TO-2026-115
