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Robert Frost

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Robert Frost
Robert Frost (1941)
Robert Frost (1941)
BornMarch 26 1874
California Template:City-state, U.S.
DiedJanuary 29 1963
Massachusetts Template:City-state, U.S.
OccupationPoet

Robert Lee Frost (March 26 1874 – January 29 1963) was an American poet. His work frequently used themes from rural life in New England, using the setting to examine complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes.

Biography

Early life

Although he is commonly associated with New England, Robert Frost was native of California, born in San Francisco, and lived there until he was 11 years old. His mother, Isabelle Moodie Frost, was of Scottish descent; his father, William Herman Frost, Jr., was a descendant of colonist Nicholas Frost from Tiverton, Devon who had sailed to New Hampshire in 1634 on the Wolfrana.

Frost's father was a former teacher, and later an editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin (which was eventually merged into the San Francisco Examiner), and an unsuccessful candidate for the city tax collector. The road not taken for young Robert might have been as a Californian editor rather than a New England poet, but William Frost, Jr. died May 5, 1885, debts were settled, and the family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts where William Frost, Sr., was an overseer at a New England mill. Frost's mother joined the Swedenborgian church and had him baptized in it, but he left it as an adult.

Despite his later association with rural life, Frost lived in the city, and published his first poem in the Lawrence high school magazine. He attended Dartmouth College, long enough to be accepted into the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. Frost returned home to teach and to work at various jobs including delivering newspapers and factory labor which he did not like.

Adult years

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on" -- Robert Frost

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 refused, 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 been graduated, she agreed, and they were married in Harvard University, which he attended for two years. He did well, but left to support his growing family. Grandfather Frost purchased a farm for the young couple in Derry, New Hampshire, shortly before his death. Frost worked on the farm for nine years and wrote many of the poems early in the mornings that would later become famous. His attempts at farming were not successful and Frost 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 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. 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. The family homestead at Franconia, which served as his summer home until 1938, is maintained as a museum and poetry conference site. From 1916 to 1938, Frost was an English Professor at Amherst College, encouraging his students to account for the sounds of the human voice in their craft. Starting in 1921, and for the next 42 years (with three exceptions), Frost spent his summers and into late fall teaching at the "Bread Loaf School of English" of Middlebury College in Ripton, Vermont. The college now owns and maintains Robert Frost's farm as a national historic site near the Bread Loaf campus.

Frost was 86 when he spoke at the inauguration of President Kennedy on January 20, 1961. He died a little more than two years later, in Boston, on January 29, 1963. He was buried at the Old Bennington Cemetery, in Bennington, Vermont. Harvard's 1965 alumni directory indicates his having received an honorary degree there; Frost also received honorary degrees from Bates College and Oxford and Cambridge universities, and he was the first to receive two honorary degrees from Dartmouth College. During his lifetime, the Robert Frost Middle School in Fairfax, Virginia, as well as the main library of Amherst College were named after him.

Selected works

Poems

Poetry Collections

-this seems to be a 2nd edition of the 1923 publication; cannot verify

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).[1]

Published as

Pulitzer Prizes

  • 1924 for New Hampshire: A Poem With Notes and Grace Notes[1]
  • 1931 for Collected Poems[2]
  • 1937 for A Further Range[3]
  • 1943 for A Witness Tree [4]

Sources

  • Pritchard, William H. (2000). "Frost's Life and Career" (http). Retrieved March 18. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  • Taylor, Welford Dunaway (1996). Robert Frost and J.J. Lankes: Riders on Pegasus. Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Library. ASIN B0006FAO4Q.

Notes

  1. ^ List of Pulitzer Prizes, Pulitzer Website
  2. ^ List of Pulitzer Prizes, Pulitzer Website
  3. ^ List of Pulitzer Prizes, Pulitzer Website
  4. ^ List of Pulitzer Prizes, Pulitzer Website
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