Robert Frost's Life and Achievements

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California on March 26, 1874 (1) Robert Frosts’ father, William Prescott Frost Jr., a teacher, and later on an editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, was of English descent, and his mother, Isabelle Moodie, was from Scottish descent (4). Frost lived In San Francisco until he was twelve, when his father died of tuberculosis. Thereafter, he, his mother, and his only sister, Jeanie, lived in the small town of Lawrence, Massachusetts.

There Frost attended Lawrence High School where he met his future wife and co-valedictorian, Elinor White (1). The young not-yet poet became interested in reading and writing poetry during his years in high school (3). Frost published his first poem in his school's magazine. After graduating, Frost went to Dartmouth long enough to get into the Theta Delta Chi fraternity (4). Frost passed the entrance exams for Harvard, but instead attended Dartmouth in 1892, because it was cheaper, but also because his grandfather blamed Harvard for the bad habits of William. Frost stayed at Dartmouth for less than a term, then left (5). This caused a fit with Elinor, she wanted him to finish college and wouldn’t marry him until he graduated college.

Frost went back to Massachusetts to teach and to work at a variety of jobs like delivering newspapers and factory labor. He hated these jobs with a passion, finally feeling his true calling as a poet (4). The poet favored Ralph Waldo Emerson, and read many of his works (6). In 1894 Robert Frost had his first poem published in The Independent, the title of his poem was “My Butterfly: an Elegy” (7). Frost proposed to Elinor, and she said no because she wanted him to finish college first, so the poet then attended Harvard Unive...

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...res, also President John F. Kennedy was quite the fan of Frost, but his first response to learning that Frost would speak at his inauguration was “downright diva-esque”. "He's a master of words and I'm going to be sure he doesn't upstage me," Kennedy told U.S. Representative Stewart Udall. "Let's not have him give any kind of a speech, or they'll remember what he said and not what I said. Maybe we can have him recite a poem.” (2)

Frost, unfortunately, died from complications with prostate surgery on January 29, 1963 (7). However, the impact that he had in the world is still seen today. High school student read and analyze his poetry and learn a little about what it was like in this time period by going through and looking at the details of his work. It just goes to show that you can learn a lot about a person by the way they write and what they write about.