Try Beta
Ten things you may not know about Wikipedia.
article
discussion
view source
Log in / create account
history
Robert Frost
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You may also be looking for Robert I. Frost, a historian.
Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. He is highly regarded
navigation
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
search
Robert Frost
for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. [1] His work
frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them
to examine complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was
honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.
Contents [hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Early years
Go
Search
interaction
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact Wikipedia
Donate to Wikipedia
Help
toolbox
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Printable version
Permanent link
Cite this page
1.2 Adult years
1.3 Personal life
2 Selected works
2.1 Poems
2.2 Poetry collections
2.3 Plays
2.4 Prose
Robert Frost (1941)
2.5 Published as
3 Pulitzer Prizes
Born
Robert Lee Frost
4 Notes
March 26, 1874
5 Sources
San Francisco, California,
6 External links
United States
Died
Biography
January 29, 1963 (aged 88)
Boston, Massachusetts,
United States
Occupation
Early years
languages
Poet, Playwright
Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California to journalist William Prescott Frost, Jr., and Isabelle Moodie.
[1]
His mother was of Scottish descent, and his father descended from Nicholas Frost of Tiverton, Devon,
England, who had sailed to New Hampshire in 1634 on the Wolfrana.[citation needed]
Български
Català
Česky
Deutsch
Ελληνικά
Español
Frost's father was a teacher and later an editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin (which afterwords merged
into the San Francisco Examiner), and an unsuccessful candidate for city tax collector. After his father's death
on May 5, 1885, in due time the family moved across the country to Lawrence, Massachusetts under the
patronage of (Robert's grandfather) William Frost, Sr., who was an overseer at a New England mill. Frost
graduated from Lawrence High School in 1892. [2] Frost's mother joined the Swedenborgian church and had him
baptized in it, but he left it as an adult.
Français
Gaeilge
한국어
Hrvatski
Bahasa Indonesia
Italiano
Magyar
Robert Frost, circa 1910
Despite his later association with rural life, Frost grew up in the city, and published his first poem in his high
school's magazine. He attended Dartmouth College for two months, long enough to be accepted into the Theta
Delta Chi fraternity. Frost returned home to teach and to work at various jobs including helping his mother teach
her class of unruly boys, delivering newspapers, and working in a factory as a lightbulb filament changer. He did
not enjoy these jobs at all, feeling his true calling as a poet.
Adult years
Nederlands
In 1894 he sold his first poem, "My Butterfly: An Elegy" (published in the November 8,
1894 edition of the New York Independent) for fifteen dollars. Proud of this accomplishment
he proposed marriage to Elinor Miriam White, but she demurred, wanting to finish college
(at St. Lawrence University) before they married. Frost then went on an excursion to the
Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia, and asked Elinor again upon his return. Having graduated
Norsk (bokmål)
Polski
Português
Român ă
Русский
Sámegiella
Српски / Srpski
Suomi
Svenska
Tagalog
Тоҷикӣ
Türkçe
Українська
Tiếng Việt
she agreed, and they were married at Harvard University [citation needed], where he attended
liberal arts studies for two years.
This is the stone wall at Frost's
farm in Derry, New Hampshire,
which he described in "Mending
Wall."
He did well at Harvard, but left to support his growing family. Grandfather Frost had, shortly
before his death, purchased a farm for the young couple in Derry, New Hampshire; and
Robert worked the farm for nine years, while writing early in the mornings and producing
many of the poems that would later become famous. Ultimately his farming proved
unsuccessful and he returned to education as an English teacher, at Pinkerton Academy
from 1906 to 1911, then at the New Hampshire Normal School (now Plymouth State
University) in Plymouth, New Hampshire.
"In three words I
can sum up
everything I've
learned about life
— It goes on" -Robert Frost
In 1912 Frost sailed with his family to Great Britain, living first in Glasgow before settling in
Beaconsfield outside London. His first book of poetry, A Boy's Will, was
published the next year. In England he made some important
acquaintances, including Edward Thomas (a member of the group known as
the Dymock Poets), T.E. Hulme, and Ezra Pound. Pound would become the first American to write a (favorable)
review of Frost's work, though Frost later resented Pound's attempts to manipulate his American prosody.
Surrounded by his peers, Frost wrote some of his best work while in England.
As World War I began, Frost returned to America in 1915. He bought a farm in Franconia, New Hampshire,
where he launched a career of writing, teaching, and lecturing. This family homestead served as the Frosts'
summer home until 1938, and is maintained today as 'The Frost Place', a museum and poetry conference site at
Franconia. During the years 1916–20, 1923–24, and 1927–1938, Frost taught English at Amherst College,
Massachusetts, notably encouraging his students to account for the sounds of the human voice in their writing.
The Robert Frost Farm in Derry,
New Hampshire, where he wrote
many of his poems, including "Tree
at My Window" and "Mending Wall."
For forty-two years, from 1921 to 1963, Frost spent almost every summer and fall teaching at the Bread Loaf School of English of Middlebury
College, at the mountain campus at Ripton, Vermont. He is credited as a major influence upon the development of the school and its writing
programs; the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference gained renown during Frost's time there. [citation needed] The college now owns and maintains his former
Ripton farmstead as a national historic site near the Bread Loaf campus. In 1921 Frost accepted a fellowship teaching post at the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he resided until 1927; while there he was awarded a lifetime appointment at the University as a Fellow in Letters. [3] The
Robert Frost Ann Arbor home is now situated at The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Frost returned to Amherst in 1927. In 1940 he
bought a 5-acre (2.0 ha) plot in South Miami, Florida, naming it Pencil Pines; he spent his winters there for the rest of his life. [4]
Harvard's 1965 alumni directory indicates Frost received an honorary degree there. Though he never graduated from college, Frost received over 40
honorary degrees, including ones from Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge universities; and he was the only person to receive two honorary degrees
from Dartmouth College. During his lifetime the Robert Frost Middle School in Fairfax, Virginia, and the main library of Amherst College were named
after him.
Frost was 86 when he spoke and performed a reading of his poetry at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy on January 20, 1961. He died in
Boston two years later, on January 29, 1963, of complications from prostate surgery. He was buried at the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington,
Vermont. His epitaph quotes a line from one of his poems: "I had a lover's quarrel with the world."
Frost's poems are critiqued in the Anthology of Modern American Poetry (Oxford University Press) where it is mentioned that behind a sometimes
charmingly familiar and rural façade, Frost's poetry frequently presents pessimistic and menacing undertones which often are either unrecognized or unanalyzed. [5]
One of the original collections of Frost materials, to which he himself contributed, is found in the Special Collections department of the Jones Library
in Amherst, Massachusetts. The collection consists of approximately twelve thousand items, including original manuscript poems and letters,
correspondence, and photographs, as well as audio and visual recordings. [6]
Personal life
Robert Frost's personal life was plagued with grief and loss. His father died of tuberculosis in 1885, when Frost was 11, leaving the family with just
$8. Frost's mother died of cancer in 1900. In 1920, Frost had to commit his younger sister, Jeanie, to a mental hospital, where she died nine years
later. Mental illness apparently ran in Frost's family, as both he and his mother suffered from depression, and his daughter Irma was committed to a
mental hospital in 1947. Frost's wife, Elinor, also experienced bouts of depression. [3]
Elinor and Robert Frost had six children: son Elliot (1896–1904, died of cholera), daughter Lesley Frost Ballantine (1899–1983), son Carol (1902–
1940, committed suicide), daughter Irma (1903–1967), daughter Marjorie (1905–1934, died as a result of puerperal fever after childbirth), and daughter
Elinor Bettina (died three days after birth in 1907). Only Lesley and Irma outlived their father. Frost's wife, who had heart problems throughout her life,
developed breast cancer in 1937, and died of heart failure in 1938. [3]
Selected works
Poems
After Apple-Picking
A Hundred Collars
Quandary
Acquainted with the Night
Hannibal
A Question
The Aim Was Song
The Hill Wife
Range-Finding
An Old Man's Winter Night
Home Burial
Reluctance
The Armful
Hyla Brook
Revelation
Asking for Roses
In a Disused Graveyard
The Road Not Taken
The Bear
In a Poem
The Road That Lost its Reason
Bereft
In Hardwood Groves
The Rose Family
Birches
In Neglect
Rose Pogonias
The Black Cottage
In White (Frost's Early Version of "Design")
The Runaway
Bond and Free
Into My Own
The Secret Sits
A Boundless Moment
A Late Walk
The Self-Seeker
A Brook in the City
Leaves Compared with Flowers
A Servant to Servants
But Outer Space
The Line-Gang
The Silken Tent
Choose Something Like a Star
A Line-Storm Song
A Soldier
A Cliff Dwelling
The Lockless Door
The Sound of the Trees
The Code
Love and a Question
The Span of Life
Come In
Lure of the West
Spring Pools
A Considerable Speck
Meeting and Passing
The Star-Splitter
The Cow in Apple-Time
Mending Wall
Stars
The Death of the Hired Man
A Minor Bird
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Dedication
The Mountain
Storm Fear
The Demiurge's Laugh
Mowing
The Telephone
Devotion
My Butterfly
They Were Welcome to Their Belief
Departmental
My November Guest
A Time to Talk
Desert Places
The Need of Being Versed in Country Things
To E.T.
Design
Neither Out Far Nor in Deep
To Earthward
Directive
Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same
To the Thawing Wind
A Dream Pang
Not to Keep
Tree at My Window
Dust of Snow
Nothing Gold Can Stay
The Trial by Existence
The Egg and the Machine
Now Close the Windows
The Tuft of Flowers
Evening in a Sugar Orchard
October
Two Look at Two
The Exposed Nest
On a Tree Fallen across the Road
Two Tramps in Mud Time
The Fear
The Vanishing Red
Fire and Ice (1916)
On Looking up by Chance at the
Constellations
Fireflies in the Garden
Once by the Pacific (1916)
War Thoughts at Home
The Flower Boat
One Step Backward Taken
What Fifty Said
Flower-Gathering
Out, Out- (1916)
The Witch of Coös
For Once, Then Something
The Oven Bird
The Wood-Pile
The Vantage Point
Fragmentary Blue
Pan With Us
Gathering Leaves
A Patch of Old Snow
The Generations of Men
The Pasture
Ghost House
Plowmen
The Gift Outright
A Prayer in Spring
A Girl's Garden
Provide, Provide
Going for Water
Putting in the Seed
Good Hours
Good-bye, and Keep Cold
The Gum-Gatherer
Poetry collections
North of Boston (David Nutt, 1914; Holt, 1914)
Mending Wall
Mountain Interval (Holt, 1916)
The Road Not Taken
Selected Poems (Holt, 1923)
Includes poems from first three volumes and the poem The Runaway
New Hampshire (Holt, 1923; Grant Richards, 1924)
Several Short Poems (Holt, 1924)[1]
Selected Poems (Holt, 1928)
West-Running Brook (Holt, 1928? 1929)
The Lovely Shall Be Choosers (Random House, 1929)
Collected Poems of Robert Frost (Holt, 1930; Longmans, Green, 1930)
The Lone Striker (Knopf, 1933)
Selected Poems: Third Edition (Holt, 1934)
Three Poems (Baker Library, Dartmouth College, 1935)
The Gold Hesperidee (Bibliophile Press, 1935)
From Snow to Snow (Holt, 1936)
A Further Range (Holt, 1936; Cape, 1937)
Collected Poems of Robert Frost (Holt, 1939; Longmans, Green, 1939)
A Witness Tree (Holt, 1942; Cape, 1943)
Come In, and Other Poems (1943)
Steeple Bush (Holt, 1947)
Complete Poems of Robert Frost, 1949 (Holt, 1949; Cape, 1951)
Hard Not To Be King (House of Books, 1951)
Aforesaid (Holt, 1954)
A Remembrance Collection of New Poems (Holt, 1959)
You Come Too (Holt, 1959; Bodley Head, 1964)
In the Clearing (Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1962)
The Poetry of Robert Frost (New York, 1969)
A Further Range (published as Further Range in 1926, as New Poems by Holt, 1936; Cape, 1937)
Nothing Gold Can Stay
What Fifty Said
Fire And Ice
A Drumlin Woodchuck
Plays
A Way Out: A One Act Play (Harbor Press, 1929).
The Cow's in the Corn: A One Act Irish Play in Rhyme (Slide Mountain Press, 1929).
A Masque of Reason (Holt, 1945).
A Masque of Mercy (Holt, 1947).
Prose
The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963; Cape, 1964).
Robert Frost and John Bartlett: The Record of a Friendship, by Margaret Bartlett Anderson (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963).
Selected Letters of Robert Frost (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964).
Interviews with Robert Frost (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966; Cape, 1967).
Family Letters of Robert and Elinor Frost (State University of New York Press, 1972).
Robert Frost and Sidney Cox: Forty Years of Friendship (University Press of New England, 1981).
The Notebooks of Robert Frost, edited by Robert Faggen (Harvard University Press, January 2007). [2]
Published as
Collected Poems, Prose and Plays (Richard Poirier, ed.) (Library of America, 1995) ISBN 978-1-88301106-2.
Pulitzer Prizes
1924 for New Hampshire: A Poem With Notes and Grace Notes
1931 for Collected Poems
1937 for A Further Range
1943 for A Witness Tree
Notes
1.
2.
^ a b "Robert Frost ". Encyclopædia Britannica (Online edition ed.). 2008. Retrieved 2008-12-21.
^ Ehrlich, Eugene; Carruth, Gorton (1982). The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States. vol. 50. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN
0195031865 .
3.
4.
^ a b c Frost, Robert; Poirier, Richard (ed.); Richardson, Mark (ed.) (1995). Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays. The Library of America. vol. 81. New York:
Library of America. ISBN 188301106X.
^ Muir, Helen (1995). Frost in Florida. Valiant Press. pp. 41. ISBN 0963346164.
5.
^ Nelson, Cary (2000). Anthology of Modern American Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 84. ISBN 0195122704.
6.
^ "Robert Frost Collection
". Jones Library, Inc. website, Amherst, Massachusetts. Retrieved 2009-03-28.
Sources
Pritchard, William H. (2000). "Frost's Life and Career
" (http). Retrieved March 18 2001.
Taylor, Welford Dunaway (1996). Robert Frost and J.J. Lankes: Riders on Pegasus. Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Library.
Burlington Free Press
, January 8, 2008 Article: Vandalized Frost house drew a crowd
Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays. 10/1995 Library of America. Robert Frost. Edited by Richard Poirier and Mark Richardson. Trade ISBN 1883011-06-X. [3]
External links
Yale College Lecture on Robert Frost
audio, video and full transcripts from Open Yale Courses
A Boy's Will
Poems by Robert Frost
An extensive collection of Frost's poetry
Wikimedia Commons has media
related to: Robert Frost
Poems by Robert Frost at PoetryFoundation.org
Robert Frost
Wikiquote has a collection of
quotations related to: Robert
Frost
at Modern American Poetry
Robert Frost's interview in The Paris Review
Robert Frost Collection
in Special Collections, Jones Library, Amherst, MA
Robert Frost Collection
in Archives and Special Collections, Amherst College, Amherst, MA
Robert Frost at Bread Loaf (Middlebury College)
Robert Frost Farm in Derry, NH
Wikisource has original works
written by or about: Robert
Frost
Robert Frost Out Loud: audio recordings and commentary on many Frost poems
Robert Frost page on Ketzle.com - poems, links
Robert Frost's lost poem "War Thoughts at Home" in The Virginia Quarterly Review
Robert Frost Collection
at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
Robert Frost's mention on the Writer's Almanac: audio of the poem Neither Out Far nor In Deep
Student finds Frost poem lost for 88 years
The Frost Foundation
The Frost Place, a museum and poetry conference center in Franconia, N.H.
Works by or about Robert Frost
in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Poemhunter.com 116 Frost Poems
v • d • e
Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress
[hide]
Joseph Auslander (1937) ∙ Allen Tate (1943) ∙ Robert Penn Warren (1944) ∙ Louise Bogan (1945) ∙ Karl Shapiro (1946) ∙ Robert Lowell (1947) ∙ Léonie Adams (1948) ∙
Elizabeth Bishop (1949) ∙ Conrad Aiken (1950) ∙ William Carlos Williams (1952) ∙ Randall Jarrell (1956) ∙ Robert Frost (1958) ∙ Richard Eberhart (1959) ∙
Louis Untermeyer (1961) ∙ Howard Nemerov (1963) ∙ Reed Whittemore (1964) ∙ Stephen Spender (1965) ∙ James Dickey (1966) ∙ William Jay Smith (1968) ∙
William Stafford (1970) ∙ Josephine Jacobsen (1971) ∙ Daniel Hoffman (1973) ∙ Stanley Kunitz (1974) ∙ Robert Hayden (1976) ∙ William Meredith (1978) ∙ Maxine Kumin (1981) ∙
Anthony Hecht (1982) ∙ Reed Whittemore (1984) ∙ Robert Fitzgerald (1984) ∙ Gwendolyn Brooks (1985) ∙ Robert Penn Warren (1986) ∙ Richard Wilbur (1987) ∙
Howard Nemerov (1988) ∙ Mark Strand (1990) ∙ Joseph Brodsky (1991) ∙ Mona Van Duyn (1992) ∙ Rita Dove (1993) ∙ Robert Hass (1995) ∙ Robert Pinsky (1997) ∙
Rita Dove / Louise Glück / W. S. Merwin (1999) ∙ Stanley Kunitz (2000) ∙ Billy Collins (2001) ∙ Louise Glück (2003) ∙ Ted Kooser (2004) ∙ Donald Hall (2006) ∙
Charles Simic (2007) ∙ Kay Ryan (2008)
Categories: American Poets Laureate | American poets | Amherst College faculty | Congressional Gold Medal recipients | Dartmouth College
alumni | English-language poets | Formalist poets | Harvard University alumni | Harvard University faculty | Writers from New Hampshire | People
from Lawrence, Massachusetts | People from San Francisco, California | Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winners | Scottish Americans | Sonneteers |
University of Michigan faculty | Middlebury College faculty | People from Bennington, Vermont | Writers from California | People from Derry, New
Hampshire | 1874 births | 1963 deaths
This page was last modified on 20 August 2009 at 03:35.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional
terms may apply. See Terms of Use for details.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers