Nothing New - photo 1
Nothing New - photo 2

Nothing New

Lot 137
16.10.2025 10:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
$ 44 450
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1472059
Lot 137 | Nothing New
Estimate value
$ 20 000 – 30 000
FROST, Robert (1874-1963). Autograph manuscript poem signed (“Robert Frost”), entitled “Nothing New”, Amherst [Massachusetts], 1918.

11 lines, written in black-brown ink on the front free endpaper of a 1916 copy of Frost’s North of Boston. The volume is a later printing of the 1915 first American trade edition, in original blue cloth with gilt lettering (slight rubbing to tips of cloth, mildest toning).

“One moment when the dust to-day
Against my face was turned to spray,
I dreamed the winter dream again
I dreamed when I was young at play,
Yet strangely not more sad than then—
Nothing new—
Though I am further upon my way
The same dream again.”

NOTHING NEW. The only extant manuscript of this fine and early Robert Frost poem, which was undiscovered and unpublished until 2025, 107 years after it was written. The poem was first published in the centennial anniversary issue of The New Yorker, with a companion article by Jay Parini (see "Lost and Found: A Newly Discovered Poem by Robert Frost", 10 February 2025).

The poem was discovered amidst the estate of a retired New England educator, with no clue as to its earlier life beyond the several decades in their home. As Parini began his article, “When I heard that a previously unpublished poem by Robert Frost had been discovered, I was skeptical. I know Frost’s poetry well, having written Robert Frost: A Life and, quite recently, a small book in which I analyze sixteen of my favorite Frost poems. I never liked some of the later ones, such as ‘Quandary’, ‘A Reflex’, or ‘In a Glass of Cider’, which suffer from a kind of terminal cuteness, and I worried that this would be one of those.

With relief, I opened ‘Nothing New’ on my laptop, seeing at once that it was indeed something new ... It’s a good poem, short and aphoristic, from a period when Frost, writing at the height of his powers, had a special affection for poems of this kind: brief, rueful, tight, focused.”

Parini continues by placing the poem in the lineage of beloved and famous poems such as “Dust of Snow” (a “not-so-distant cousin” of “Nothing New”), “Fire and Ice”, and “Nothing Gold Can Stay”. These were all published in Frost’s fourth and Pulitzer prize-wining collection of poems, New Hampshire (1923), and are very distinct from the poems printed in North of Boston. Although Frost did not choose “Nothing New” to be included in New Hampshire, as Parini concludes, “I’m glad we have it now; it has grace notes I would not like to lose.”
Auction house category:Letters, documents and manuscripts
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
Preview
02.10.2025 – 16.10.2025
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Email
4FQ.AYGKAGLUQ@FO3G@
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йоханнес краг (1870 - 1946)
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