Robert Frost Biography

Robert Frost Biography

  • Submitted By: anndee
  • Date Submitted: 05/09/2013 11:02 AM
  • Category: Biographies
  • Words: 1094
  • Page: 5
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Born on March 26, 1874, Robert Frost spent his first 40 years as an unknown. He exploded on the scene after returning from England at the beginning of WWI. Winner of four Pulitzer Prizes and a special guest at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, Frost became a poetic force and the unofficial "poet laureate" of the United States. He died of complications from prostate surgery on January 29, 1963.


Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California. He spent the first 12 years of his life there, until his father, William Prescott Frost Jr., died of tuberculosis. Following his father's passing, Frost moved with his mother and sister Jeanie to the town of Lawrence, Massachusetts. They moved in with his grandparents, and Frost attended Lawrence High School, where he met his future love and wife, Elinor White, his co-valedictorian.

After his high school graduation in 1892, Frost attended Dartmouth University for several months, returning home to work a slew of unfulfilling jobs. In 1894, he had his first poem, "My Butterfly: an Elegy," published in The Independent, a weekly literary journal based in New York City. With this success, Frost proposed to Elinor, who was attending St. Lawrence University. She turned him down because she first wanted to finish school. Frost then decided to leave on a trip to Virginia, and when he returned, he proposed again. By then, Elinor had graduated from college, and she accepted. They married on December 19, 1895, and had their first child, Elliot, in 1896.

Beginning in 1897, Frost attended Harvard University, but had to drop out after two years due to health concerns. He returned to Lawrence to join his wife, who was now pregnant with their second child, Lesley, who suffered from mental illness. In 1900, Frost moved with his wife and children to a farm in New Hampshire—property that Frost's grandfather had purchased for them—and they attempted to make a life on it for the next 12 years. Though it was...

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