Robert Frost's Timeline

Robert Lee Frost

(1874-1963)

* Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California

* His father William Frost, a journalist and an ardent Democrat, died when Frost was about eleven years old

* His Scottish mother, the former Isabelle Moody, resumed her career as a schoolteacher to support her family.

* The family lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts, with Frost's paternal grandfather, William Prescott Frost

* In 1892 Frost graduated from a high school and attended Dartmouth College for a few months.

* Frost worked among others in a textile mill and taught Latin at his mother's school in Methuen, Massachusetts

* In 1894 the New York Independent published Frost's poem 'My Butterfly'

* In 1895 he married a former schoolmate, Elinor White; they had six children.

* From 1897 to 1899 Frost studied at Harvard, but left without receiving a degree.

* In 1912 Frost sold his farm and moved his family to England where he first published his collection of poems, A BOY'S WILL, at the age of 39. It was followed by NORTH BOSTON (1914)

* The collection contains some of Frost's best-known poems: 'Mending Wall,' 'The Death of the Hired Man,' 'Home Burial,' 'A Servant to Servants,' 'After Apple-Picking,' and 'The Wood-Pile.'

* His wife died in 1938 and he lost four of his children. Two of his daughters suffered mental breakdowns, and his son Carol, a frustrated poet and farmer, committed suicide.

* Frost also suffered from depression