Robert Frost (1874 – 1963)

Interested in reading and writing poetry from a young age, Frost attended Harvard University in Boston but never earned a degree. After leaving school he worked a number of jobs including being a teacher and a cobbler, and he published his first poem, "My Butterfly" in the November 8 1894 edition of The Independent, a New York newspaper. He married Elinor Miriam White in 1895, and the couple moved to New Hampshire to become farmers, but after that venture failed they moved in England in 1912. In England Frost befriended Ezra Pound, who helped publish and promote his work - A Boy's Will (1913), and North of Boston (1914), both published by Henry Holt & Company. Frost returned to the United States in 1915, and by the 1920s was an established poet, going on to win multiple Pulitzers (four) and being named the Poet Laureate of the United States in 1958-1959. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his works. Frost read a poem at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, the President declared of Frost, “He has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding".