Frost, Robert Lee was a United States poet who did much to popularize contemporary poetry. He received forty-four honorary degrees and many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize.
Frost was born in San Francisco and on his father’s death ten years later was taken to New England by his mother. His affinity for New England, where he spent most of his life, permeated his poetry, and it is as a regional poet that he is best remembered. An inauspicious education at Dartmouth College and Harvard (he never completed a college course to obtain a degree) was followed by various menial jobs and marriage at the age of twenty one. It was not until he took his wife and four children to England in 1912, where he met several of the Georgian poets, that Frost’s talent began to emerge. His first two books of verse, A Boys’ Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914), were first published in England. The latter volume, in particular, brought recognition and success in his own country when he returned to United States of America in 1915. The collections that followed, Mountain Interval (1916) and New Hampshire (1923), contained some of Frost’s best and most popular poetry. His later books included Collected Poems (1930), A Further Range (1936), and A Witness Tree (1942).
The ironic tone of much of Frost’s poetry, its simple language, and conventional manner make him one of the most accessible of modern poets. Through out of his Frost successfully combined a career as poet, farmer, and university professor and is regarded as one of the masters of twentieth century of United States poetry.
Frost, Robert Lee (1874-1963)
