Jackson Creek Middle School
Biography on Robert Frost
by Kendall K.
On March 26, 1874 Robert Lee Frost was born in San Francisco, California. His father was William Prescott and worked as a newspaper reporter. His mother's name was Isabel Prescott and was a schoolteacher. Her maiden name was Moodie. When Frost was 11 years old his father died (1884). In Lawrence, Massachusetts, Frost graduated from Lawrence High School in 1892. He was the valedictorian and class poet of his class.
Once Frost was out of high school he attended Dartmouth College. He attended here for a couple months, but soon left. Frost had become engaged to Elinor Miriam White. Elinor was also a valedictorian and classmate of Frost. While Frost was engaged to Elinor he sold his first poem,"My Butterfly" in 1894 to the New York Independent. Frost and Elinor got married on December 28, 1895.
While Frost was married he had many jobs. He worked as a bobbin boy in a mill, a schoolteacher, a newspaper editor, and a farmer. In 1895 after he married Elinor, he worked as a teacher in Lawrence, Massachusetts. This is where their first son was born. He then attended Harvard from 1897-1899, but did not get a degree. Frost then tried to farm chickens to support his wife, son, and baby daughter in Methuen, Massachusetts. He then moved to Derry, New Hampshire, where his son died. Later in 1906 Frost got pneumonia and nearly died.
Years later, in 1912, Frost and his family moved to England. Here, Frost turned to poetry for his career. Frost and his family settled in Buckinghamshire on a farm. Here he published A Boys Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914).
Frost returned to America in 1915, and in 1916 he brought together lyric and narrative poems in Mountain Interval. From 1917-1923 Frost recieved many achievements, academic honors and even cofounded a school. Also in 1923 Frost's New Hampshire and Selected Poems came out. Frost then went to Amherst and settled there in 1926. The collection of lyric and narrative poems in West Running Brook came out in 1928. West Running Brook contained poems such as "Tree at My Window" and "Acquainted With the Night".
While Frost visited Paris from 1928-1930 he published Collected Poems in 1930. After this, his daughter Marjorie died. He then returned to Harvard and in 1936 published A Further Range. "Design" and "Neither Out Far or in Deep" are two of his poems in A Further Range. In 1938 Frost's wife, Elinor, died of a hearth attack. In 1939 Frost's second Collected Poems came out and in 1940 his last surviving son committed suicide. A Witness Tree appeared in 1942 with poems such as "Come in" and "Happiness Makes up In Height for What it Lacks in Length". The year 1947 brought Steeple Bush , another book of poems by Frost. And in 1949 Frost's Complete Poems came out.
Frost returned to England in 1957. Frost read the poem "A Gift Outright" in 1961 at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. In 1962 Frost's last volume, In The Clearing appeared. Frost died of complications after an operation in Boston, Massachusetts on January 29, 1963. He was 88 years old. Frost was buried in Old Bennington, Vermont.
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Updated on April 21, 2003