Robert Frost
Born March 26, 1874 Died January 29, 1963
Robert Frost was born in San Francisco and
firstborn child of Isabella and William Prescott Frost,
the junior Frost was named after Robert E. Lee the
Confederate General
Robert Frost's father was city editor for the
San Francisco Evening Post But he died of T.B.
when his son was only eleven years old causing his mother
to move Robert and his younger sister to live with their
paternal grandparents in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Here Frost graduates from Lawrence High School
and shares Valedictorian honors with fellow student
Elinor White who eventually becomes his wife.
His first published poem in 1890 'La Nocho
Triste based on Prescott's Conquest of
Mexico appeared in the Lawerence High School
Bulletin. After graduation Frost briefly attends
Dartmouth College, but leaves to work in various jobs,
mill worker, newspaper reporter as well as teaching in
schools.
In 1897 Frost enters Harvard College as a
special student, but leaves before completing his degree
requirements due to a bout of T.B. and the birth of his
second child. Three years later his firstborn son Elliot
dies of cholera sending his wife Elinor into a state of
depression that causes marital discord. Death and mental
illness continued to dog his family down through the
years.
Frost tries his hand at farming but is not
very successful and in 1912 unable to interest American
publishers in his writing and poetry sells the farm and
moves his family to England where his efforts to
establish himself as a writer are at last successful
A Boys Will was accepted by a London
publisher and released in 1913 followed a year later by
North of Boston He received favorable reviews
from both sides of the Atlantic.
Whilst in England, Frost associates himself
with several other poets like Lascelles,
Abercombie and Robert Brooke He became
particularly close friends with the brooding Welshman
named Edward Thomas whom he urged to turn his
prose into poetry. Thomas eventually did, dedicating his
verse to Frost before dying during WW1.
In 1915 Frost returns to America and through
his literary life receives the Pulitzers Prize
four times for his works of poetry as well as a gold
medal in 1939 by the National Institute for Arts and
Letters in New York. In 1958 along with his fellow
writers and poets T.S. Elliot and Earnest Hemmingway,
Robert Frost signs a letter and gets invited to the White
House to help fellow writer Ezra Pound get released from
a mental home where he is being held for treason. Pound
is finally released when the charges are dismissed after
a successful court hearing.
Robert Frost continued to write and publish
poetry despite his failing health and in 1963 he was
awarded the Bollinger Prize for poetry. After
suffering an embolism he dies shortly after midnight on
January the 29th, leaving a legacy of one of America's
greatest poets.
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