Born to a Scottish immigrant and a native New Hampshirite on March 26, 1874, Robert Frost was immersed in literature from the beginning of his life. Frost’s father, a teacher and editor of a San Francisco newspaper, taught him to write at a young age. Frost himself found himself immersed in poetry since his teenage years; his first published poem was written for a high school magazine, and though he dropped out of college in order to more easily support his family, he always maintained that poetry was his true calling.
Frost’s first poem, “My Butterfly. An Elegy” was sold when he was just nineteen years old for the equivalent of four hundred dollars. Since that moment, he continued to build on his career in poetry while also working menial labor. Many of his most prolific poems were written in a two year period when Frost was working farmland for his family, including his “Tuft of Flowers” and “My Lost Youth” pieces.
After settling down with a family of his own in England in 1912, Frost studied with famed poet Edward Thomas to create other illustrious pieces like “The Road Not Taken”. During the advent of World War I in 1915, Frost returned to America, where he spent nearly fifty years advancing his poetry and passing on his talent. In that time, he taught classes at The Bread Loaf School of English of Middlebury College and won four Pulitzer Prizes for his contributions to the culture of poetry.
While Frost remains a well-known individual, and a respected one at that, he died suddenly in 1963 due to surgical complications. Still, his unexpected demise did nothing to tarnish his renown, and to this day he is one of the more eminent names of 19th century poetry.
While Frost doesn’t have a website, you can read more about him here, and read his most celebrated poem, The Road Not Taken, here.
