41 Facts About Robert Frost

Frequently honored during his lifetime, Robert Frost is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.

Robert Frost became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution".

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco to journalist William Prescott Frost Jr.

Robert Frost's father was a descendant of Nicholas Frost of Tiverton, Devon, England, who had sailed to New Hampshire in 1634 on the Wolfrana, and his mother was a Scottish immigrant.

Robert Frost was a descendant of Samuel Appleton, one of the early English settlers of Ipswich, Massachusetts, and Rev George Phillips, one of the early English settlers of Watertown, Massachusetts.

Robert Frost's father was a teacher and later an editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, and an unsuccessful candidate for city tax collector.

Robert Frost graduated from Lawrence High School in 1892, where he published his first poem in the high school magazine, served as class poet and, with his future wife Elinor White, was co-valedictorian.

Robert Frost's mother joined the Swedenborgian church and had him baptized in it, but he left it as an adult.

Robert Frost attended Dartmouth College for two months, long enough to be accepted into the Theta Delta Chi fraternity.

Robert Frost returned home to teach and to work at various jobs, helping his mother teach her class of unruly boys, delivering newspapers and working in a factory maintaining carbon arc lamps.

Robert Frost said that he did not enjoy these jobs, feeling that his true calling was to write poetry.

Robert Frost then went on an excursion to the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and asked Elinor again upon his return.

Robert Frost attended Harvard University from 1897 to 1899, but he left voluntarily due to illness.

In 1912, Robert Frost sailed with his family to Great Britain, settling first in Beaconsfield, a small town in Buckinghamshire outside London.

Robert Frost met or befriended many contemporary poets in England, especially after his first two poetry volumes were published in London in 1913 and 1914.

In 1915, during World War I, Robert Frost returned to America, where Holt's American edition of A Boy's Will had recently been published, and bought a farm in Franconia, New Hampshire, where he launched a career of writing, teaching and lecturing.

Robert Frost was made an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard in 1916.

Robert Frost called his colloquial approach to language "the sound of sense".

Robert Frost won the first of four Pulitzer Prizes for New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes.

From 1921 to 1962, Robert Frost spent almost every summer and fall teaching at the Bread Loaf School of English of Middlebury College, at its mountain campus at Ripton, Vermont.

Robert Frost is credited with being a major influence upon the development of the school and its writing programs.

In 1921, Robert Frost accepted a fellowship teaching post at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he resided until 1927, when he returned to teach at Amherst.

The Robert Frost Ann Arbor home was purchased by The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan and relocated to the museum's Greenfield Village site for public tours.

In 1934, Robert Frost began to spend winter months in Florida.

Robert Frost was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1958 by Librarian of Congress Lawrence Quincy Mumford, serving for one year until succeeded by Richard Eberhart.

Robert Frost was 86 when he performed a reading at the inauguration of John F Kennedy on January 20,1961.

Robert Frost began by attempting to read his poem "Dedication", which he had composed for the occasion, but due to the brightness of the sunlight he was unable to see the text, so he recited "The Gift Outright" from memory instead.

Robert Frost was buried in the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont.

Elinor and Robert Frost had six children: son Elliott ; daughter Lesley Frost Ballantine ; son Carol ; daughter Irma ; daughter Marjorie ; and daughter Elinor Bettina.

Critic Harold Bloom argued that Robert Frost was one of "the major American poets".

In 2003, the critic Charles McGrath noted that critical views on Robert Frost's poetry have changed over the years.

In 1977, the third volume of Lawrance Thompson's biography suggested that Frost was a much nastier piece of work than anyone had imagined; a few years later, thanks to the reappraisal of critics like William H Pritchard and Harold Bloom and of younger poets like Joseph Brodsky, he bounced back again, this time as a bleak and unforgiving modernist.

Robert Frost has refused all of these and in the refusal has long seemed less dramatically committed than others.

Insofar as Robert Frost allows to both fact and intuition a bright kingdom, he speaks for many of us.

Robert Frost cites certain motifs, including that of the tree bent down to earth, as evidence of his "very attentive reading of Bacchae, almost certainly in Greek".

Robert Frost was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 31 times.

Harvard's 1965 alumni directory notes that Robert Frost received an honorary degree there.

In 1960, Frost was awarded a United States Congressional Gold Medal, "In recognition of his poetry, which has enriched the culture of the United States and the philosophy of the world"; it was formally bestowed on him by John F Kennedy in March 1962.

Robert Frost was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1931 and the American Philosophical Society in 1937.

On July 22,1961, Robert Frost was named Poet Laureate of Vermont by the state legislature through Joint Resolution R-59 of the Acts of 1961, which created the position.

The most significant collection of Robert Frost's working manuscripts is held by Dartmouth.