About the Author

Robert Frost's father, William Frost, ventured out of his native New Hampshire to work as headmaster at a small private school in Pennsylvania. There he met and married the school's only teacher, Isabelle Moodie. After their marriage in 1873, William and Isabelle struck out for San Francisco, where their son Robert was born. Their marriage was apparently stormy, and Isabelle left William for a year during Robert's early childhood. During these years, William worked as a journalist for the San Francisco Bulletin. He died in 1885 of tuberculosis, possibly complicated by alcoholism. Following her husband's last wishes, Isabelle and her children returned east with his body so that he might be buried in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Robert attended high school in Lawrence, proving himself an excellent student of classics and becoming known as class poet. He shared the honor of being named class valedictorian with Elinor White, whom he resolved to marry. After attending Dartmouth for part of a semester, Frost dropped out and attempted to persuade Elinor to set the wedding date immediately. She, however, insisted on first completing her studies at St. Lawrence College, graduating in 1895 and agreeing to the marriage in the same year.

After supporting himself and Elinor at a variety of jobs while continuing to write poetry, Frost decided to return to college and in 1897 persuaded Harvard to accept him as a special student. In 1899, the Frosts moved to Derry, New Hampshire, living on a farm purchased for them by Frost's grandfather. The years in New Hampshire were difficult. By 1905, Elinor had given birth to five children, and the family faced constant economic problems. Frost acknowledged to friends that he had seriously contemplated suicide during this time. In 1906, however, his financial circumstances improved when he accepted a teaching position at Pinkerton Academy, where he was inspired to introduce creative innovations to the established curriculum, teaching drama and writing most of the poems that he eventually published in his first book.

Because of his difficulty in finding an American publisher, Frost sold the farm in 1911 and moved his family to London. There he submitted his poems to the English publisher Alfred Nutt, who published the collection A Boy's Will in 1913. The book won great acclaim in England, and as a result Frost became acquainted with many poets whose work he had long admired, including Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, and Amy Lowell. In 1915, World War I forced the Frost family to return to the United States. The success that Frost had enjoyed in England spread to the United States, and in 1917 he was invited to teach at Amherst College, where he remained for many years, occasionally spending time at other colleges and universities as visiting professor or poet-in-residence.

Lawrance Thompson's biography of Frost, published between 1966 and 1976, presents convincing evidence that Frost was not simply the kindly, wise poet-farmer living the idyllic rural life that many of his admirers imagined; he was far more complex. He had suffered many personal tragedies, including the death, at age four, of his first-born son, the mental illness of his sister Jeanie, the death of his wife (who refused to see him during her final illness) in 1938, and the suicide of his only living son in 1940. Thompson's research suggests that these troubles, combined with Frost's ambitions and vanity, often led to mean-spirited and even vindictive actions that alienated many of his friends and family members.

Whatever his personal failings may have been, he traveled widely, serving as a goodwill ambassador to South America and to what was then the Soviet Union. In 1961, he was recognized as one of America's strongest and most distinct voices when John F. Kennedy invited him to read a poem at the inauguration ceremonies. Frost continued to accept speaking engagements until his death, at the age of eighty-eight, on January 29, 1963.

Frost's poems often seem deceptively simple because he draws on familiar subjects, often depicting scenes from the natural world as well as people with easily recognized strengths and failings. His language, while powerful and evocative, is easily accessible to most readers and so it is easy to overlook the way his poems often depend on ambiguity for their impact. His works offer many different possibilities, whether they focus on an image from nature or on a scene from daily life ("Mending Wall," "Home Burial," and "Out, Out--"). Frost's poetry can never be reduced to a formula; his work often surprises the reader. For example, "Acquainted with the Night" uses city images rather than the rural, country scenes many readers associate with his work. The selections here provide merely a glimpse at the variety that characterizes Frost's vast body of work.

Major works of poetry by Frost

A Boy's Will (1913)
North of Boston (1914)
Mountain Interval (1916)
New Hampshire (1923)
West-Running Brook (1928)
A Further Range (1936)
A Witness Tree (1942)
Come In, and Other Poems (1943)
Hard Not to Be King (1951)
The Gift Outright (1961)
In the Clearing (1962)

Frost and the Web

Here's a great start page from the Academy of American Poets. It includes a photo, a bio, a bibliography, links to poems, and more.

Here are links to four volumes of Frost's poetry in etext: A Boy's Will, North of Boston, Mountain Interval, and Miscellaneous Poems to 1920.

Interested in using the WWW to research Frost? The New York Times has put together a great guide for studying the poet online. (Free registration required.)

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