Robert Frost

Here is a bit of information on the classic American poet Robert Frost, whose poems we read in class and I quite enjoyed.

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco (a little contrary to his homey descriptions of nature...) in 1874. We can see his roots in literature early on, as his father was a journalist. When his father died, he moved with his mother to Massachusetts, where he attended Lawrence High School and met his future wife, Elinor White. In 1892 he enrolled in Dartmouth College, and dropped out shortly thereafter. In 1894, he sold his first poem to a New York magazine, and he married Elinor in 1895. He enrolled in Harvard in 1897, stayed for two years, then dropped out and moved onto a farm in Massachusetts. He met with hard times as a farmer, and subsequently began teaching. During this time, he had six children, two of whom died at an early age. In 1913, after moving to Beaconsfield, England a year before, he published his first book of poems, A Boy's Will. In 1915, because of World War I, he was forced to move back to America, and took up residence in New York City. He then proceeded to purchase a farm in New Hampshire. In 1924, he wrote his first of four Pulitzer prize winning books, New Hampshire. After a few more successful books, tragedy struck; his daughter Marjorie died of puerperal fever in 1934, and his wife Elinor died of a heart attack in 1938. He himself died of a series of embolisms coupled with a heart attack while receiving surgery on his prostate in 1963.