Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl by John Greenleaf Whittier
Ticknor and Fields, 1866. First edition, second issue, tenth thousandth. Hardcover. 52 pages. Bound in green cloth, gilt stamped titles to spine and front. Tissue-guarded frontispiece portrait engraved by H.W. Smith from a photograph by Hawes. Title vignette.
VG. Clean, square, and tight. Mild rubbing at spine tips, corners, and to front and rear boards. A.H. Gibbs Library bookplate affixed to front pastedown. Else free of all markings. Bright pages.
◇
Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl is a long narrative poem by American poet John Greenleaf Whittier first published in 1866. The poem, presented as a series of stories told by a family amid a snowstorm, was extremely successful and popular in its time. The poem depicts a peaceful return to idealistic domesticity and rural life after the American Civil War.
The poem takes place in Whittier's childhood home, today known as the John Greenleaf Whittier Homestead, which still stands in Haverhill, Massachusetts. The poem chronicles a rural New England family as a snowstorm rages outside for three days. Stuck in their home for that period, the family members exchange stories by their roaring fire.
In a later edition's introduction, Whittier notes that the characters are based on his father, mother, brother, two sisters, an unmarried aunt and unmarried uncle, and the district schoolmaster who boarded at the homestead. The final guest in the poem was based on Harriet Livermore. The poem includes an epigraph quoting several lines from "The Snow-Storm" by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
