Robert Frost

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874. At the age of 11, Frost moved to New England and became interested in poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, but never earned a formal degree.

Frost tried his hand at many occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on Nov. 8, 1894, in a New York newspaper.

Frost was married in 1895 to Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced by British poets Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke and Robert Graves. Living in England, Frost also became friends with Ezra Pound, who helped promote and publish his work. By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections, "A Boy's Will" and "North of Boston."

By the 1920s, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new book—including "New Hampshire" (1923), "A Further Range" (1936), "Steeple Bush" (1947) and "In the Clearing" (1962)—his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes) increased.

Frost was a poet of traditional verse poems and his work was primarily concerned with the landscape of New England. He was a modern poet who explored universal themes such as the darkness of the soul and portraits of psychological complexity, employing irony and ambiguity.

Frost died on Jan. 29, 1963, in Boston. He had four children, six grandchildren, and eleven great-grandchildren.

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