Robert Frost Biography

Born On: March 26, 1874

Born In: San Francisco, California, USA

Died On: January 29, 1963

Nationality: American 

 

Robert Lee Frost was a renowned American Poet. He is often remembered for the use of wonderful traditional verse forms and metrics in his poetry, a style that was completely detached from the poetic movements and fashions of his time. He became popular mainly because of his real and lively descriptions of the contemporary rural life of New England. His poems were based around social and philosophical themes of the area. Robert Frost boasts of the distinction of receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry, in his lifetime. His writings and inspirational quotes have immensely infulenced generations.

 

Childhood

Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, to William Prescott Frost Jr. and Isabelle Moodie, in San Francisco, California. He had a Scottish descent from his mother's side and an English descent from his father's side. However, he acquired an American nationality by birth. His father was a journalist working with San Francisco Evening Bulletin and his mother was a house wife. Robert Frost spent his early childhood in San Francisco, till he shifted, along with his family, to Lawrence, Massachusetts in New England, after his father's death (in 1885).

 

Education and Early Career

After graduating from Lawrence High School, in the year 1892, Robert Frost attended Dartmouth College for some time. He later enrolled himself in Harvard as well. However, he never ever attained a formal degree. Frost came back to his home soon after and started working as a teacher. There, he kept on shuffling from one job to other. He even worked as a factory labor and newspaper delivery boy. However, he could never indulge his heart into these works, because of his love for poetry.

 

Poetic Career

Robert Frost got his first poem 'My Butterfly' published on 8th November 1894, in 'The Independent', a New York newspaper (though he had already published a poem in his high school's magazine, it could not exactly be called a start of his poetic career). He kept on with his poetry expeditions even he was working as farmer on his Derry farm, in New Hampshire, for nine years. At that time, he used to write poems early in the morning, before indulging in the farm work. Many of these poems later became extremely popular.

 

Robert had to move from Derry, after he failed in his farming endeavor. In the year 1912, he moved to England, where he came across the works of contemporary British poets, such as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. It was in 1913 that his first book of poetry, A Boy's Will, was published. Robert, then, struck a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped him promote and publish his work later on. Frost wrote most of his popular poetry during this phase only.

 

Later Life

After the World War I began, Robert Frost returned to America from England.  He, then, brought a farm in Franconia, New Hampshire, and began a new life as a writer, teacher and lecturer. In later years of his life, 1916-20, 1923-24, and 1927-1938, Frost worked as an English teacher, at Amherst College, Massachusetts. During all these years, he kept encouraging his students to express the resonances of the human voice in their writing.

 

From 1921 to 1963, Robert spent every summer and fall teaching English at the Bread Loaf School of English, of Middlebury College, in Vermont. In the year 1921, he also accepted a fellowship teaching post at the University of Michigan.  By that time, he had brought a plot in South Miami, Florida, naming it 'Pencil Pines', to be used as his winter residence. In the later years of his life, he kept shuffling between these places. He received his first Pulitzer Prize in 1924 and then three more times, in 1931, 1937 and 1943.

 

Death

Robert Frost died on January 29, 1963, at the age of 89, in Boston, after succumbing to the complications arising from his prostate surgery. He was buried in Bennington at the Old Bennington Cemetery. His memorial on the graveyard reads, 'I had a lover's quarrel with the world'

 

Personal Life

Robert Frost's personal life was quite tragic. He was only eleven when his father died of tuberculosis, without leaving any riches for his family. After some years his mother also died, leaving him under the patronage of his grandfather. In 1920, Frost's younger sister Jeanie had to be sent to mental asylum, where she succumbed to depression and other mental illness, after 9 years. In 1895, while still in Harvard, he married Elinor, his college sweetheart. Later, his wife suffered bouts of depression. In 1947, his daughter Irma had to be admitted to a mental hospital. Out of his six children, only two - Lesley and Irma outlived him. His wife became a patient of breast cancer and died of heart failure, in 1938.

 

Works

 

Poems

• After Apple-Picking
• Acquainted With the Night
• The Aim Was Song
• An Old Man's Winter Night
• The Armful
• Asking for Roses
• The Bear
• Bereft
• Birches
• The Black Cottage
• Bond And Free
• A Boundless Moment
• A Brook In The City
• But outer Space
• Choose Something Like a Star
• A Cliff Dwelling
• The Code
• Come In
• A Considerable Speck
• The Cow In Apple-Time
• The Death of the Hired Man
• Dedication
• The Demiurge's Laugh
• Devotion
• Departmental
• Desert Places
• Design
• Directive
• A Dream Pang
• Dust of Snow
• The Egg and the Machine
• Evening In A Sugar Orchard
• The Exposed Nest
• The Fear
• Fire and Ice
• Fireflies in the Garden
• The Flower Boat
• Flower-Gathering
• For Once, Then Something
• Fragmentary Blue
• Gathering Leaves
• The Generations of Men
• Ghost House
• The Gift Outright
• A Girl's Garden
• Going For Water
• Good Hours
• Good-bye, and Keep Cold
• The Gum-Gatherer
• A Hundred Collars
• Hannibal
• The Hill Wife
• Home Burial
• Hyla Brook
• In a Disused Graveyard
• In a Poem
• In Hardwood Groves
• In Neglect
• In White (Frost's Early Version of "Design")
• Into My Own
• A Late Walk
• Leaves Compared with Flowers
• The Line-Gang
• A Line-Storm Song
• The Lockless Door
• Love And A Question
• Lure Of The West
• Meeting And Passing
• Mending Wall
• A Minor Bird
• The Mountain
• Mowing
• My Butterfly
• My November Guest
• The Need of Being Versed in Country Things
• Neither Out Far Nor in Deep
• Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same
• Not to Keep
• Nothing Gold Can Stay
• Now Close The Windows
• October
• On A Tree Fallen Across The Road
• On Looking Up by Chance at the Constellations
• Once By The Pacific (1916)
• One Step Backward Taken
• Out, Out- (1916)
• The Oven Bird
• Pan With Us
• A Patch of Old Snow
• The Pasture
• Plowmen
• A Prayer in Spring
• Provide, Provide
• Putting in the Seed
• Quandary
• A Question
• Range-Finding
• Reluctance
• Revelation
• The Road Not Taken
• The Road That Lost its Reason
• The Rose Family
• Rose Pogonias
• The Runaway
• The Secret Sits
• The Self-seeker
• A Servant to Servants
• The Silken Tent
• A Soldier
• The Sound of the Trees
• The Span of Life
• Spring Pools
• The Star-Splitter
• Stars
• Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
• Storm Fear
• The Telephone
• They Were Welcome to Their Belief
• A Time to Talk
• To E.T.
• To Earthward
• To the Thawing Wind
• Tree at My Window
• The Trial By Existence
• The Tuft of Flowers
• Two Look at Two
• Two Tramps in Mud Time
• The Vanishing Red
• The Vantage Point
• War Thoughts At Home
• What Fifty Said
• The Wood-Pile 

Poetry Collection

• North of Boston
• Mending Wall
• Mountain Interval
• The Road Not Taken
• New Hampshire
• Several Short Poems
• Selected Poems
• West-Running Brook
• The Lovely Shall Be Choosers  
• Collected Poems of Robert Frost
• The Lone Striker
• Selected Poems: Third Edition
• Three Poems
• The Gold Hesperidee  
• From Snow to Snow
• A Further Range
• Collected Poems of Robert Frost
• A Witness Tree  
• Come In, and Other Poems
• Steeple Bush
• Complete Poems of Robert Frost, 1949
• Hard Not To Be King
• Aforesaid
• A Remembrance Collection of New Poems
• You Come Too
• In the Clearing
• The Poetry of Robert Frost
• A Further Range
• Nothing Gold Can Stay
• What Fifty Said
• Fire And Ice
• A Drumlin Woodchuck 

Plays

• A Way Out: A One Act Play
• The Cow's in the Corn: A One Act Irish Play in Rhyme
• A Masque of Reason  
• A Masque of Mercy 

Prose

• The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer
• Anderson
• Selected Letters of Robert Frost
• Interviews with Robert Frost
• Family Letters of Robert and Elinor Frost
• Robert Frost and Sidney Cox: Forty Years of Friendship
• The Notebooks of Robert Frost, edited by Robert Faggen 

Awards

1924: Got Pulitzer Prizefor 'New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace  Notes'

1931: Got Pulitzer Prize for 'Collected Poems'

1937: Got Pulitzer Prize for 'A Further Range'

1943: Got Pulitzer Prize for 'A Witness Tree'

 

Timeline

 

1874:  Robert Frost was born

1885: Lost his father,Moved with his family toLawrence, Massachusetts, New England.

1892: Graduated fromLawrence High School

1894: Got his poem'My Butterfly' published in 'The Independent', Proposed marriage to his girl friend Elinor Miriam White

1895: Got married to Elinor Miriam White

1897: Movedto Derry, New Hampshire, for farming expeditions.

1900: Lost his mother to cancer

1906: JoinedPinkerton Academy at New Hampshire, as English teacher

1912: Moved to England.

1913: Got his first book of poetry, 'A Boy's Will', published

1915: Moved back to America

1921: Accepted a fellowship teaching post at the University of Michigan, Joined Bread Loaf School of English of Middlebury College in Vermont (as summer faculty)

1938: Lost his wifetoheart failure

1961: Performed a reading of his poetry at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy

1963: Died in Boston, from a complication arising out ofprostate surgery