A Boy's Will and North of Boston

Robert Frost

Mar 2012 · Courier Corporation

About this ebook

Although Robert Frost (1874–1963) wrote poetry throughout his youth and early adult years, his first collection of poems was not published until he was nearly 40 years old. And, ironically, it was not in America that this quintessentially American poet was first published, but in England. In 1912, he settled his family in Buckinghamshire, determining to devote his full life to poetry.
In 1913, Frost published A Boy's Will, his first collection of poems. A series of sharply observed impressions of New England rural life touching upon universal themes, it included such poems as "Into My Own," "Asking for Roses," "Spoils of the Dead," and "Reluctance." A second volume, North of Boston, followed in 1914 and contained several of Frost's finest and best-known works: "Mending Wall," "After Apple-Picking," "The Death of the Hired Man," and others. Both volumes are reprinted here complete and unabridged ― a treasury of fine early verse by one of the 20th century's most admired poets.

About the author

Robert Frost, the quintessential poet of New England, was born in San Francisco in 1874. He was educated at Dartmouth College and Harvard University. Although he managed to support himself working solely as a poet for most of his life and holding various posts with a number of universities, as a young man he was employed as a bobbin boy in a mill, a cobbler, a schoolteacher, and a farmer. Frost, whose poetry focuses on natural images of New England, received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times for: New Hampshire, Collected Poems, A Further Range, and A Witness Tree. His works are noted for combining characteristics of both romanticism and modernism. He also wrote A Boy's Will, North of Boston, Mountain Interval, and The Gift Outright, among others. Frost married Elinor Miriam White in 1895, and they had six children--Elliott, Lesley, Carol, Irma, Marjorie, and Elinor Bettina. He died in Boston in 1963.