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    Robert Frost Biography

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    Robert Frost (1874-1963) was an American poet who won four Pulitzer Prizes. He became the unofficial poet laureate of the United States in the mid-20th century. Frost spent his early years in California and Massachusetts, publishing his first poem in 1894. He struggled financially and with family tragedies on a farm in New Hampshire from 1900-1912. Frost's career was launched after moving to England in 1912, where two books of his poetry were published. Upon returning to the U.S. in 1915, his reputation grew and he took teaching positions at several colleges, writing poetry until his death.

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    Robert Frost Biography

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    bcbennett20
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    Robert Frost (1874-1963) was an American poet who won four Pulitzer Prizes. He became the unofficial poet laureate of the United States in the mid-20th century. Frost spent his early years in California and Massachusetts, publishing his first poem in 1894. He struggled financially and with family tragedies on a farm in New Hampshire from 1900-1912. Frost's career was launched after moving to England in 1912, where two books of his poetry were published. Upon returning to the U.S. in 1915, his reputation grew and he took teaching positions at several colleges, writing poetry until his death.

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    Bio of Frost

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    Robert Frost (1874-1963) was an American poet who won four Pulitzer Prizes. He became the unofficial poet laureate of the United States in the mid-20th century. Frost spent his early years in California and Massachusetts, publishing his first poem in 1894. He struggled financially and with family tragedies on a farm in New Hampshire from 1900-1912. Frost's career was launched after moving to England in 1912, where two books of his poetry were published. Upon returning to the U.S. in 1915, his reputation grew and he took teaching positions at several colleges, writing poetry until his death.

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    2K views3 pages

    Robert Frost Biography

    Uploaded by

    bcbennett20
    Robert Frost (1874-1963) was an American poet who won four Pulitzer Prizes. He became the unofficial poet laureate of the United States in the mid-20th century. Frost spent his early years in California and Massachusetts, publishing his first poem in 1894. He struggled financially and with family tragedies on a farm in New Hampshire from 1900-1912. Frost's career was launched after moving to England in 1912, where two books of his poetry were published. Upon returning to the U.S. in 1915, his reputation grew and he took teaching positions at several colleges, writing poetry until his death.

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    Educator, Poet (18741963)

    The ear does it. The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.
    Robert Frost

    Robert Frost won four Pulitzer Prizes and was the Inaugural Poet for President
    Kennedy in 1961. He became the unofficial poet laureate of the United States in the
    mid-20th Century.

    Synopsis
    Born on March 26, 1874, Robert Frost spent his first 40 years as an unknown. He
    exploded on the scene after returning from England at the beginning of WWI.
    Winner of four Pulitzer Prizes and a special guest at President John F. Kennedys
    inauguration, Frost became a poetic force and the unofficial "poet laureate" of the
    United States. He died of complications from prostate surgery on January 29, 1963.

    Early Years
    Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California. He spent the
    first 12 years of his life there, until his father, William Prescott Frost Jr., died of
    tuberculosis. Following his father's passing, Frost moved with his mother and sister
    Jeanie to the town of Lawrence, Massachusetts. They moved in with his
    grandparents, and Frost attended Lawrence High School, where he met his future
    love and wife, Elinor White, his co-valedictorian.

    After his high school graduation in 1892, Frost attended Dartmouth University for
    several months, returning home to work a slew of unfulfilling jobs. In 1894, he had
    Robert Frost
    his first poem, "My Butterfly: an Elegy," published in The Independent, a weekly
    literary journal based in New York City. With this success, Frost proposed to Elinor,
    who was attending St. Lawrence University. She turned him down because she first
    wanted to finish school. Frost then decided to leave on a trip to Virginia, and when
    he returned, he proposed again. By then, Elinor had graduated from college, and she
    accepted. They married on December 19, 1895, and had their first child, Elliot, in
    1896.

    Beginning in 1897, Frost attended Harvard University, but had to drop out after two
    years due to health concerns. He returned to Lawrence to join his wife, who was
    now pregnant with their second child, Lesley, who suffered from mental illness. In
    1900, Frost moved with his wife and children to a farm in New Hampshire
    property that Frost's grandfather had purchased for themand they attempted to
    make a life on it for the next 12 years. Though it was a fruitful time for Frost's
    writing, it was a difficult period in his personal life.

    Elinor gave birth to four more children, Carol (1902); Irma (1903), who later
    developed mental illness; Marjorie (1905); and Elinor (1907), and two of the Frost
    children died. Elliot died of cholera in 1900, and Elinor died of complications from
    birth just weeks after she was born. Additionally, during that time, Frost and Elinor
    tried several endeavors, including poultry farming, all of which were fairly
    unsuccessful.

    Despite such challenges, it was during this time that Frost acclimated himself to
    rural life. In fact, he grew to depict it quite well, and began setting many poems in
    the countryside. While two of these, "The Tuft of Flowers" and "The Trial by
    Existence," would be published in 1906, he could not find any publishers who were
    willing to underwrite his other poems.
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    Public Recognition for Poetry
    In 1912, Frost and Elinor decided to sell the farm in New Hampshire and move the
    family to England, where more publishers would be willing to take a chance on new
    poets, they believed. Within just a few months, Frost, now 38, found a publisher who
    would publish his first book of poems, A Boys Will, followed by North of Boston a
    year later. It was at this time that Frost met Ezra Pound and Edward Thomas, two
    men who would affect his life in significant ways.

    Pound and Thomas were the first to review his work in a favorable light, as well as
    provide significant encouragement. Frost credited Thomas's long walks over the
    English landscape as the inspiration for one of his most famous poems, "The Road
    Not Taken." Apparently, Thomas's indecision and regret regarding what path to take
    inspired Frost's work. The time Frost spent in England was one of the most
    significant periods in his life, but it was short-lived. WWI broke out in 1914, and
    Frost and Elinor returned to America early in 1915.

    When Frost arrived back home, his reputation had preceded him, and he was well-
    received by the publishing world. His publisher, Henry Holt, who would remain with
    him for the rest of his life, had purchased all of the copies of North of Boston, and in
    1916, he published Frost's Mountain Interval, a collection of other works that he
    created while in England, including a tribute to Thomas. Publishers such as the
    Atlantic Monthly, who had turned Frost down when he submitted work earlier,
    came calling. Frost famously sent theMonthly the same poems that they had rejected
    before his stay in England.

    In 1916, Frost and Elinor settled down on a farm that they purchased in Franconia,
    New Hampshire. There, Frost began a long career as a teacher at several colleges,
    reciting poetry to eager crowds and writing all the while. He taught at Dartmouth
    and the University of Michigan at various times, but his longest stint was at Amherst
    College, where he taught on and off for significant periods for more than 45 years,
    and where the main library is now named in his honor. He also spent almost every
    summer and fall at Middlebury College, teaching English on its campus in Ripton,
    Vermont.

    Frost received more than 40 honorary degrees during his lifetime. In 1924, he
    received his first of four Pulitzer Prizes for his book New Hampshire. He would
    subsequently win his other Pulitzers for Collected Poems (1931),Further
    Range (1937) and A Witness Tree (1943).

    Literary Legacy
    In the late 1950s, Frost, along with Ernest Hemingway and T.S. Eliot, championed
    the release of his old acquaintance Ezra Pound, who was being held in a federal
    mental hospital for treason. Pound was released in 1958, after indictments were
    dropped. In 1962, Frost visited the Soviet Union on a goodwill tour. His
    announcement that Americans are "too liberal to fight," when he visited the Soviet
    Premier Khrushchev, caused a lot of grief. That same year, Congress awarded Frost
    the Congressional Gold Medal.

    In 1961, at the age of 86, Frost was honored when asked to write and recite a poem
    for President John F. Kennedy's inauguration. His sight now failing, he was not able
    to see the words in the sunlight and substituted the reading of one of his poems,
    "The Gift Outright," which he had committed to memory. On January 29, 1963, Frost
    died from complications related to prostate surgery. He was survived by two of his
    daughters, Lesley and Irma, and his ashes are interred in a family plot in
    Bennington, Vermont.

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