Biography of
ROBERT FROST
Robert Frost

Robert Frost (1941)
Born Robert Lee Frost
March 26, 1874
San Francisco, California,
United States

Died January 29, 1963 (aged 88)
Boston, Massachusetts,
United States

Occupation Poet, playwright

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"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on" -- Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.

A. EARLY YEARS (Robert Frost, circa 1910)
Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California, to journalist William Prescott Frost, Jr., and Isabelle Moodie.[1] His mother was of Scottish descent, and his father descended from Nicholas Frost of Tiverton, Devon, England, who had sailed to New Hampshire in 1634 on the Wolfrana.
Frost's father was a teacher and later an editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin (which later merged with the San Francisco Examiner), and an unsuccessful candidate for city tax collector. After his death on May 5, 1885, the family moved across the country to Lawrence, Massachusetts, under the patronage of (Robert's grandfather) William Frost, Sr., who was an overseer at a New England mill. Frost graduated from Lawrence High School in 1892.[2] Frost's mother joined the Swedenborgian church and had him baptized in it, but he left it as an adult.

B. ADULT YEARS
This is a stone wall at Frost's far m in Derry, New Hampshire, however, Frost was inspired to write "Mending Wall" by various walls he saw in Fife, Scotland. In 1894 he sold his first poem, "My Butterfly. An Elegy" (published in the November 8, 1894, edition of the New York Independent) for $15 - equivalent in spending power to at least $300 today. Proud of his accomplishment, he proposed marriage to Elinor Miriam White, but she demurred, wanting to finish college (at St. Lawrence University) before they married. Frost then went on an excursion to the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and asked Elinor again upon his return. Having graduated, she agreed, and they were married at Lawrence, Massachusetts on December 19, 1895.(Thompson and Meyers)
Frost attended Harvard University from 1897–1899, but he left voluntarily due to illness Shortly before dying, Robert's grandfather purchased a farmfor Robert and Elinor in Derry, New Hampshire; and Robert worked the farm for nine years, while writing early in the mornings and producing many of the poems that would later become famous. Ultimately his farming proved unsuccessful and he returned to the field of education as an English teacher at New Hampshire's Pinkerton Academy from 1906 to 1911, then at the New Hampshire Normal School (now Plymouth State University) in Plymouth, New Hampshire.
In 1912 Frost sailed with his family to Great Britain, settling first in Beaconsfield, a small town outside London. His first book of poetry, A Boy's Will, was published the next year. In England he made some important acquaintances, including Edward Thomas (a member of the group known as the Dymock Poets), T.E. Hulme, and Ezra Pound. Although Pound would become the first American to write a (favorable) review of Frost's work, Frost later resented Pound's attempts to manipulate his American prosody. Frost met or befriended many contemporary poets in England, especially after his first two poetry volumes were published in London in 1913 (A Boy's Will) and 1914 (North of Boston).

C. PERSONAL LIFE
Robert Frost's personal life was plagued with grief and loss. In 1885 when Frost was 11, his father died of tuberculosis, leaving the family with just eight dollars. Frost's mother died of cancer in 1900. In 1920, Frost had to commit his younger sister Jeanie to a mental hospital, where she died nine years later. Mental illness apparently ran in Frost's family, as both he and his mother suffered from depression, and his daughter Irma was committed to a mental hospital in 1947. Frost's wife, Elinor, also experienced bouts of depression.
Elinor and Robert Frost had six children: son Elliot (1896–1904, died of cholera); daughter Lesley Frost Ballantine (1899–1983); son Carol (1902–1940, committed suicide); daughter Irma (1903–1967); daughter Marjorie (1905–1934, died as a result of puerperal fever after childbirth); and daughter Elinor Bettina (died just three days after her birth in 1907). Only Lesley and Irma outlived their father. Frost's wife, who had heart problems throughout her life, developed breast cancer in 1937, and died of heart failure in 1938.

D. LITERARY WORKS
POEMS
 The Cow in Apple-Time
 The Death of the Hired Man
 Dust of Snow
 The Egg and the Machine
 Evening in a Sugar Orchard
 The Exposed Nest
 The Fear
 Fire and Ice (1920)
  In a Disused Graveyard
 In a Poem
 In Hardwood Groves
 In Neglect
 In White (Frost's Early Version of "Design")
 Into My Own
 A Late Walk  The Armful
 The Rose Family
 Rose Pogonias
 The Runaway
 The Secret Sits
 The Self-Seeker
 A Servant to Servants
 The Silken Tent
POETRY COLLECTIONS
 New Hampshire (Holt, 1923; Grant Richards, 1924)
 Several Short Poems (Holt, 1924)[1]
 Selected Poems (Holt, 1928)
 West-Running Brook (Holt, 1928? 1929)
 The Lovely Shall Be Choosers (Random House, 1929)
PLAYS
 A Way Out: A One Act Play (Harbor Press, 1929).
 The Cow's in the Corn: A One Act Irish Play in Rhyme (Slide Mountain Press, 1929).
 A Masque of Reason (Holt, 1945).
 A Masque of Mercy (Holt, 1947).
PROSE
 The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963; Cape, 1964).
 Robert Frost and John Bartlett: The Record of a Friendship, by Margaret Bartlett Anderson (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963).
 Selected Letters of Robert Frost (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964).
 Interviews with Robert Frost (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966; Cape, 1967).
 Family Letters of Robert and Elinor Frost (State University of New York Press, 1972).

FIRE & ICE
Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor five.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice