New Hampshire - Literary New Hampshire

New Hampshire Literature

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 Farm
Route 28
Derry, New Hampshire 03038
Phone: 603-432-3091
Hours: Open from Memorial Day weekend to mid-June on Saturdays and Sundays only, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; from mid-June to Labor Day, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and noon to 5 p.m. on Sundays. Closed Mondays.
Cost: Admission fee charged

Robert Frost and his family lived at this farm from 1900 to 1911. The simple two-story white clapboard farmhouse is typical of a rural New England residence of the 1880s. Guided house tours, a children’s garden, walks along the Hyla Brook Trail, a summer lecture series, and poetry readings on selected Sundays are all available at the park. The Hyla Brook Trail is an interpretive trail with an accompanying brochure. Books and other Frost-related items may be purchased at the Visitor’s Center.

The Frost Place
Ridge Road
P.O. Box 74
Franconia, New Hampshire 03580
Phone: 603-823-5510
E-mail: rfrost@ncia.net
Hours: Memorial Day weekend 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; month of June, Saturdays and Sundays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; July 2 to August 31 daily except Tuesdays 1 to 5 p.m.; July 31 to August 6 daily except Tuesdays 3 to 5 p.m. and poetry reading 8 p.m.; September 1 to October 10 daily except Tuesdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Cost: Fee charged

The Frost Place, a farmstead in the White Mountains of New Hampshire where Robert Frost lived and worked, is now a non-profit Center for Poetry and the Arts owned by the town of Franconia. Two rooms of the farmhouse are used as a museum of Frost’s life and work with signed first editions of his books. Visitors view the rooms where Frost lived and wrote and see an engaging half-hour video about his life. A half-mile Poetry-Nature Trail though fields and woods presents displays of Frost’s Franconia poems mounted on plaques, surrounded by dozens of New England wildflowers and plants. Each summer, a nationally honored poet has been chosen to come live and work in the house where Frost wrote some of his best work. The summer program begins in early July on a publicly designated “Frost Day,” with a reading by the summer poet-in-residence. It culminates in the first part of August with two weeks of public poetry readings.