Robert Frost

Essay by Clif GordonHigh School, 11th gradeA+, March 1996

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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...