Life and Works of Robert Frost

Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was born in San Francisco to William Prescott Frost Jr. and Isabelle Moodie. His father, a hustling journalist, died in 1885, leaving his widow and two children with hardly enough money to make it back to Lawrence, Massachusetts. There, young Frost's paternal grandfather, William Prescott Frost Sr., supported the family financially. He eventually set up the aspiring poet on a farm in Derry, New Hampshire where Frost, with support of his wife Elinor, wrote some of his most memorable poems. Frost published only rarely in his early years and was still unknown in 1912 when he sailed with his family to England. His first two books appeared in England to critical acclaim: A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914). Upon returning to the United States in 1915, Frost found himself a literary celebrity and settled first in Franconia, New Hampshire and then South Shaftsbury, Vermont. 

As his fame grew, Frost pioneered the role of “poet in residence,” alternately teaching at Amherst College, the University of Michigan, Dartmouth College, and Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English. He won four Pulitzer Prizes for New Hampshire (1923), Collected Poems (1930), A Further Range (1936), and A Witness Tree (1942). He spent his later years “barding around” the United States and also served as a cultural ambassador abroad, travelling at the behest of the State Department to Israel, Brazil, and the Soviet Union. In January 1961, Frost delivered the nation’s first inaugural poem to commemorate John F. Kennedy’s election. Two years later, the poet died in Boston of a complication from bladder cancer surgery. He was buried next to a leaning birch tree in the Old Bennington Cemetery, alongside Elinor and other family members.

Books of Poetry

   A Boy's Will
   North of Boston
   Mountain Interval
   Selected Poems
   New Hampshire
   Several Short Poems
   Selected Poems
   West-Running Brook1929     The Lovely Shall Be Choosers1930     Collected Poems of Robert Frost1933     The Lone Striker1935     The Gold Hesperidee

   From Snow to Snow
   A Further Range1939     Collected Poems of Robert Frost
   A Witness Tree1943     Come In, and Other Poems1947     Steeple Bush1949     Complete Poems of Robert Frost1951     Hard Not To Be King1954     Aforesaid1959     A Remembrance Collection of New Poems1959     You Come Too1962     In the Clearing

Letters

■  Selected Letters of Robert Frost. Edited by Lawrance Thompson. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964.
■  Family Letters of Robert and Elinor Frost. Edited by Arnold Grade. The State University of New York Press, 1972.
■  The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 1, 1886–1920. Edited by Donald G. Sheehy, Mark Richardson, and Robert Faggen. Harvard University Press, 2014.
■  The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 2, 1920–1928. Edited by Donald G. Sheehy, Mark Richardson, Robert Bernard Hass, and Henry Atmore. Harvard University Press, 2016.
■  The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 3, 1929–1936. Edited by Donald G. Sheehy, Robert Bernard Hass, and Henry Atmore. Harvard University Press, 2021.

Interviews and First-Hand Accounts

■  Cox, Sidney. A Swinger of Birches: A Portrait of Robert Frost. New York University Press, 1957.
■  Cook, Reginald Lansing. Robert Frost, a Living Voice. University of Massachusetts Press, 1974.
■  Mertins, Louis. Robert Frost: Life and Talks-Walking. University of Oklahoma Press, 1965.
■  Interviews with Robert Frost. Edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966.■  Robbins, J. Albert. An Interlude with Robert Frost: Being a Brief Correspondence with the Poet, and Recollections. The Private Press of Frederic Brewer, 1982.
■  Francis, Lesley Lee. The Frost Family's Adventure in Poetry: Sheer Morning Gladness at the Brim. University of Missouri Press, 1994.■  Francis, Lesley Lee. You Come Too: My Journey with Robert Frost. University of Virginia Press, 2015.

■  Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley. Robert Frost: The Trial by Existence. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1960.
■  Thompson, Lawrence. Robert Frost: The Early Years, 1874-1915. Henry Holt & Company, 1966.■  Thompson, Lawrance. Robert Frost : The Years of Triumph, 1915-1938. ·Henry Holt & Company, 1970.
■  Thompson, Lawrance Roger. Robert Frost: The Later Years, 1938-1963. Henry Holt & Company, 1976.■  Cramer, Jeffrey. Robert Frost Among His Poems: A Literary Companion to the Poet’s Own Biographical Contexts and Associations. McFarland, 1996.
■  Parini, Jay. Robert Frost: A Life. Henry Holt, 1999.
■  Hart, Henry. The Life of Robert Frost: A Critical Biography. John Wiley & Sons, 2017.

Life and Works of Robert Frost

The Risk of Spirit: An Artist's Life

Works by Frost

Books of Poetry

Plays

Frost in His Own Words

Letters

Prose

Interviews and First-Hand Accounts

Biographies