Robert Frost Collection

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. His father, William Prescott Frost, a journalist, died of tuberculosis in 1885. At age eleven he moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts with his mother Isabelle Moody Frost and sister Jeanie. He graduated from Lawrence High School in 1892, sharing honors as class valedictorian with Elinor Miriam White, who later became his wife. Frost enrolled at Dartmouth College and later, in 1897, at Harvard, but never earned a formal academic degree. After dropping out of college, he was a teacher, cobbler, editor and farmer. Frost's first published poem, "My Butterfly: An Elegy," appeared on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent. He and Elinor White were married in 1895. Through the next dozen years six children were born, two of whom died prematurely, leaving a surviving family of one son and three daughters: Carol, Lesley, Irma, and Marjorie.

From 1900 to 1909 Frost raised poultry on a farm in Derry, New Hampshire, and taught at the local school, Pinkerton Academy. In August 1912, he sold the property (newly owned) and moved the family to England, determined to establish himself in poetry in a country he thought was more receptive to his work. In England, he met and was influenced by Ezra Pound, Robert Graves, Rupert Brooke and Edward Thomas. Pound, in particular, was a supporter of Frost's work. In England he published A Boy's Will (1913) and shortly after that North of Boston (1914), both of which then came out in American editions. When he sailed back to the United States with his family in 1915, Frost's literary reputation was established.

A lecture he gave at the College in 1916 marked the beginning of a long relationship with the Amherst. (For a chronology, see "Robert Frost and Amherst College," below.)

By the 1920s Frost had become one of America's most celebrated poets. Each new book of poems (Mountain Interval (1916), New Hampshire (1923), West-Running Brook (1928), A Further Range (1936), A Witness Tree (1942), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962)) met with unprecedented commercial sales and critical praise, including four Pulitzer Prizes. Frost resided in a succession of farms and houses in New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts (including Amherst). He frequently toured throughout the U.S. and in many foreign countries to do readings and to take up poet-in-residence appointments at a number of colleges and universities. His reading of the poem "The Gift Outright" at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961 was a memorable occasion.

Robert Frost died in Boston on January 29, 1963.

For a detailed chronology of Robert Frost's life, see Collected Poems, Prose and Plays by Robert Frost (N.Y.: Library of America, 1995).

1916

First college readings: lectured at Amherst College April 8.

1917-1920

Professor of English

1917-1918

Taught Advanced Composition

1918-1919

Taught American Authors

1919-1920

Taught American Literature-19th Century Poets; Advanced Composition

1918

Awarded honorary M.A. by Amherst, May 2. This was the first honorary degree awarded Frost by any college or university.

1923-1925

Professor of English.

1923-1924

Taught Readings in English Literature

1924-1925

Taught Readings in Poetry, Drama, Essay and Short Story; Advanced Writing

1926

John Woodruff Simpson Lecturer (in residence for two weeks in January)

1926-1938

Professor of English on the John Woodruff Simpson Foundation endowment.

Held informal classes and readings and worked individually with students and teachers.

1931

"Education by Poetry" published in Amherst Graduates Quarterly.

1938

Memorial service held in Johnson Chapel on April 22 for Elinor Frost, who had died in Florida on March 20.

1948

Awarded honorary Litt.D. by Amherst on June 20.

1948

"Speaking of Loyalty" published in Amherst Graduates Quarterly.

1949-1963

Simpson Lecturer in Literature. Spent several weeks in Amherst each fall and spring, meeting with students and faculty and holding public readings.

1954

80th birthday celebration at Amherst College, March 26.

1962

September: Amherst announces its new library to be named for Frost, who is present at the announcement.

1962

Frost's last public appearance at Amherst (Parent's Day readings), October 20.

1963

Robert Frost dies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, January 29.

1963

Convocation for President John F. Kennedy and groundbreaking for the Robert Frost Library, October 26.

1965

Dedication of the Robert Frost Library, October 24.