Robert+Frost

= Robert Frost  = = March 26, 1874-January 29, 1963 =

Robert Frost was born to Isabelle Moodie and William Prescott Frost Jr., who were both teachers. Being the son of two teachers, Frost was exposed rather early on to poetry, books, and other forms of literature. He also grew to have a life-long love of nature.

 He went to Lawrence high school where he began writing his own poems. He did well in all of his classes, played football, and graduated at the top of his class. In 1892, Frost entered Dartmouth College, but became disenthralled with campus life a and took a on a series of jobs, including teaching and working on a mill, all the while still writing poetry.

In 1894, Frost got his first big break writing for a New York magazine called Independent. They published his work “My Butterfly: An Elegy” for a stipend of $15. A year later on December 19, 1854, Frost married his high school sweetheart, Elinor Miriam White. They Had six children together, sons Elliot and Carol and daughters Lesley, Irma, Marjorie, and Elinor Bettina.

Frost and his wife continued to teach, although it interfered with his writing. In 1897 Frost entered Harvard University. Illness caused him to leave in 1899 before finishing his degree. Later on, however, it would be one of the many institutions to award him with an honorary degree.

In 1911 Frost sold his farm and moved his family to England where his first collection of poetry, A Boy's Will, was published by a small London printer, David Nutt. Later on, an American Printer, Henry Holt, published the same work. His work was well received.

When World War I started, the Frosts were back in New Hampshire, settling at their newly purchased farm in Franconia in 1915. In 1916, Mountain Interval was published, which contained many poems written at Franconia. In 1920, Frost bought ‘Stone House’, which is now a museum, in South Shaftsbury, Vermont. It was here he wrote many of the poems contained in his fourth collection of poetry New Hampshire which won him the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923. It includes “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening”:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

He would go on to publish many more collections of poems before his death on January 29th, 1963