Vermont - Literary Vermont

Vermont Literature

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Rudyard Kipling, the storyteller of British colonial India of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, carved a place for himself as poet of the British Empire and herald of the common British soldier, whom he glorified in many of his works. Kipling was born in 1865, the son of English parents living in Bombay, India. As a child, he was educated in England, but he returned in his late teens to India, where he worked for newspapers and published his first literary work, Departmental Ditties, in 1886. Returning to England in 1889, Kipling won instant success with Barrack-Room Ballads. In 1892 he married Carrie Balestier, the sister of his American friend and literary collaborator Wolcott Balestier. That year, he and his wife moved to America and sought peace and privacy near Mrs. Kipling’s family in Vermont. Working with New York architect Henry Marshall, Kipling had a new house constructed in the popular Shingle style and named it Naulakha, which means “precious jewel.” Kipling often referred to the view of the Wantastiquet mountain range and Mount Monadnock as rising “like a giant thumbnail pointing heavenward.” At Naulakha Kipling wrote The Jungle Book and Captains Courageous. The Jungle Book became a children’s classic all over the world. Other works include The Second Jungle Book, The Seven Seas, Captains Courageous, and many more.

Naulakha (Kipling House)
Kipling Road
Dummerston, VT 05301

Strange as it seems, Mowgli, the jungle boy, Shere Khan, the ruthless tiger, and Bagheera, the fearsome panther — all inhabitants of The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling — were brought to life in the very un-tropical mountains of Vermont, where Kipling lived and wrote from 1892 to 1896. Although the jungle characters and images were conceived during Kipling’s childhood in India, they came to life on paper within the walls of Naulakha, the house Kipling built in Dummerston, near Brattleboro. Naulakha has been restored by the Landmark Trust, a British nonprofit foundation devoted to preserving historic homes. Landmark Trust rents out the property as a summer home and winter ski chalet. It is not open to the public but is visible from public roads.

Many of the original Kipling furnishings remained after the house was sold by the Kipling family in 1903. The Kiplings left plaster statues presented by William Chandler Harris, the author of the Uncle Remus stories; the desk at which Kipling wrote The Jungle Book series; and a teakwood sideboard from India. Naulakha is one of the best-preserved estates in Vermont from this period.

Marlboro College Rice-Aron Library
64 Dalrymple Road
Marlboro, Vermont 05344
Phone: 802-258-9221
E-mail: library@marlboro.edu

Rice-Aron Library at Marlboro College houses an intriguing Rudyard Kipling collection focusing on the writer’s stay in Vermont.

Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Robert Frost, whose writings are often considered to capture the heart and soul of New England, was born in 1874 in San Francisco. When he was 11 his family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts. He began writing poetry in high school. Frost entered Dartmouth University, stayed for one semester, and then returned to Massachusetts to briefly teach school. In 1894, he sold one of his poems, “My Butterfly: An Elegy” to a national magazine, the Independent. He married in 1895 and attended Harvard College. In 1900, Frost’s paternal grandfather, worried by the young Robert’s apparent lack of ambition, bought a farm in Derry, New Hampshire for Robert’s use. The farm was completely isolated. For Frost, who especially enjoyed the seclusion, the farm was an ideal setting to raise his family and continue to write poetry in private. In 1906, Frost secured a position to teach English at Derry’s Pinkerton Academy.

The Frost family moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed. During his time abroad, Frost met and was influenced by several accomplished British poets. By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections and his reputation was established. In 1917, he began teaching at Amherst College. He was co-founder of the Bread Loaf School of English in Ripton, Vermont. By the 1920s, he was the most celebrated poet in America, eventually winning four Pulitzer Prizes. After Frost’s wife Elinor died in 1938, he purchased the Homer Noble farm in Ripton, Vermont. The farm became for him a place of refuge and restoration, and was his final permanent residence. On Frost’s 89th birthday in 1962, he received a special Congressional Medal of Honor. The same day, his last book of new poems was published. He died in Boston.

Robert Frost Stone House Museum
121 Historic Route 7A
Shaftsbury, Vermont 05262
Phone: 802-447-6200
Hours: Open May 1 to December 29, Tuesday through Sunday (closed Mondays) 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. December hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., weather permitting.
Cost: Fee charged

Frost’s Stone House Museum features galleries in the house where Robert Frost lived and wrote some of his best poetry. His fourth book, titled New Hampshire, was published during this period and it won him his first Pulitzer Prize. One of his most beloved poems, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” was composed on a hot June morning in 1922 at the dining room table. The grounds of the property are complete with many images that evoke Frost’s poetry including stone walls, birch trees, fields and woods, and even some of Frost’s original apple trees.

Robert Frost Memorial Drive
East Middlebury, Vermont 05766

A 14-mile route through woods, farmlands, and mountains starting at the junction of U.S. Route 7 and Vermont Route 125 in East Middlebury, Vermont. Two miles east of Ripton is the Robert Frost Wayside Area, where the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail begins.

Robert Frost Interpretive Trail
Route 125
Middlebury, Vermont 05753

This three-quarter-mile trail in the Green Mountain National Forest is about one mile west of the Bread Loaf campus of Middlebury College. It winds through woodland, and plaques along the trail contain quotations from Frost poems. Picnic space is available near the trailhead.

Old Bennington Cemetery
Route 9
Bennington, Vermont 05201

Robert Frost purchased a plot in the cemetery of the Old Bennington Congregational Church after the deaths of his wife Elinor and his son Carol. Robert Frost died on January 28, 1963 in Boston. A private memorial service was held in Appleton Chapel of Memorial Church in Harvard Yard. A few weeks later a public memorial service was held in Johnson Chapel of Amherst College. On June 16, 1963, Frost’s ashes were buried in the plot at the Old Bennington Cemetery. The epitaph that he chose was, “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.”