Robert Frost

Robert Lee Frost was born on the 26th March 1874 in San Francisco, California.

His father found providing for the family a constant challenge and he died, when Frost was 11, from tuberculosis and left an estate valued at only $8. The family moved east to Lawrence, Massachusetts, and a better life with his grandfather.

After graduating from High School, and then a few months at Dartmouth college, he returned home to take on a variety of menial jobs to help support his mother. Their drudgery and poor money encouraged him to move in a different direction: a career as a poet.

He sold his first poem in 1894 for $15. With this milestone he proposed to his high school sweetheart who declined as she was still studying at university. The following year she graduated and they married. A year later the first of their six children arrived. 

After a stint at Harvard for two years he received the gift of a farm from his ailing grandfather. Frost worked the farm and wrote unpublished poetry for several years before turning to a teaching position.

Upon the death of one of his children the grief-stricken family decided to quit everything and live in England, moving across the Atlantic in 1912. The following year he published his first poetry book and with it came critical acclaim. He was now in his late thirties.

The onset of World War I saw Frost return to America with a glowing reputation, and here he launched himself into a career of writing, teaching and lecturing. 

In 1924 he received the first of four Pulitzer Prizes, for his book ‘New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes’. He received a second Pulitzer in 1931 for ‘Collected Poems’. A third Pulitzer Prize was presented in 1937 for ‘A Further Range’. His fourth Pulitzer was awarded in 1943 for ‘A Witness Tree’.

Frost was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 31 times.

During these years personal tragedy had enveloped him. A daughter had died in her late 20s from the effects of her puerperal fever at childbirth, his wife had died of breast cancer, and a son had committed suicide. 

Then, at the age of 86, was asked to read his poem ‘The Gift Outright’ at President John F Kennedy’s inauguration on the 20th January, 1961. 

Robert Frost died on the 29th January 1963 in Boston of complications arising from prostate surgery. He was 88.

Portable Poetry

New Hampshire – A Poem with Notes: 'In any way the world knew how to speak''

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