Robert Frost

Biography

Robert Lee Frost (1874–1963) was an American poet who is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. Born in San Francisco, Frost moved to New England at age eleven after his father’s death, and the landscapes and people of rural New England became the foundation of his poetry. After working as a teacher, farmer, and mill laborer, Frost moved to England in 1912, where he published his first two collections—A Boy’s Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914)—to critical acclaim. Returning to America, he became the most celebrated poet of his era, winning four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry (1924, 1931, 1937, 1943) and reading at President Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961. Frost’s poetry is deceptively accessible: his conversational language and rural New England settings mask extraordinary formal skill and philosophical depth. Poems like "The Road Not Taken," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Mending Wall," and "Birches" are among the most widely read and quoted in English. Beneath their pastoral surfaces, Frost’s poems explore isolation, mortality, the limits of knowledge, and the darkness at the edge of the familiar.