Robert Frost
Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco. His father
was William Frost, a Harvard graduate who was on his way westward
when he stopped to teach at Bucknell Academy in Pennsylvania for
extra money. His mother, Isabelle Moodie began teaching math at
Bucknell while William was there, and they got married and moved to
San Francisco. They were constantly changing houses, and William
went from job to job as a journalist. About a year after moving to San
Francisco, they had Robert. They named him Robert Lee Frost, after
William's childhood hero, Robert E. Lee.
Frost's father died from tuberculosis at age thirty-four, in 1885.
Isabelle took Robert and his sister back east to Massachusetts. Soon
they moved to Salem, New Hampshire, where there was a teaching
opening. Robert began to go to school and sit in on his mothers
classes. He soon learned to love language, and eventually went to
Lawrence High School, where he wrote the words to the school hymn,
and graduated as co-valedictorian.
Frost read rabidly of Dickens,
Tennyson, Longfellow, and many others. Frost was then sent to
Dartmouth college by his controlling grandfather, who saw it as the
proper place for him to train to become a businessman. Frost read
even more in college, and learned that he loved poetry.
His poetry had little success getting published, and he had to
work various jobs to make a living, such as a shoemaker, a country
schoolteacher, and a farmer. In 1912 Frost gave up his teaching job,
sold his farm, and moved to England. He received aid from poets suck
as Edward Thomas and Rupert Brooke, and published his first two
volumes of poetry, A Boy's Will in 1913, and North of Boston in 1914.
These works were...