Robert Frost

Frost, Robert (Lee)

(1874–1963) poet, teacher; born in San Francisco. He studied at Dartmouth College (1892) and Harvard (1897–99) but never took a degree. He was a mill worker and teacher (1892–97), a farmer in New Hampshire (1900–12), and lived in England (1912–15); his first volume of poems, A Boy's Will, was published there (1913). Upon his return to New Hampshire he settled on a farm but he taught at many universities and colleges in the ensuing years. He was a founder of the Bread Loaf School, Middlebury, Vt., (1920) and was poetry consultant to the Library of Congress (1958). He was often honored for his work, and in later years he cultivated the image of America's poet laureate; this climaxed when he read his poem "A Gift Outright" at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy (1961). Although those who knew him best admitted that he could be prickly, even nasty, none denied his achievements as a poet. His work is distinguished by its everyday language, New England settings, and the natural world, as in North of Boston (1914). Individual poems, such as "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Mending Wall," and "The Death of a Hired Man," have ensured his popularity as well as critical acclaim.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.