Robert Frost: References & Edit History

Lawrance Thompson, Robert Frost, 3 vol., vol. 3 coauthored with R.H. Winnick (1966–76), is a comprehensive biography. A fine early biography is Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, Robert Frost: The Trial by Existence (1960). William H. Pritchard, Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered, 2nd ed. (1993), is a provocative revisionist biography. Other biographies are Jeffrey Meyers, Robert Frost: A Biography (1996); and Jay Parini, Robert Frost: A Life (1998). Philip L. Gerber, Robert Frost, rev. ed. (1982), provides a thorough introduction to Frost’s life and works. Henry Hart, The Life of Robert Frost (2017), is a critical biography.

Selected Letters of Robert Frost, ed. by Lawrance Thompson (1964); and The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer, ed. by Louis Untermeyer (1963), provide segments of his correspondence. The Letters of Robert Frost: Volume 1, 1886–1920, ed. by Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, and Robert Faggen (2014); and The Letters of Robert Frost: Volume 2, 1920–1928, ed. by Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, Robert Bernard Hass, and Henry Atmore (2016), cover Frost’s early life. The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 3: 1929–1936, ed. by Mark Richardson, Donald Sheehy, Robert Bernard Hass, and Henry Atmore (2021), illuminates Frost’s life as he was coming into the fullness of his creative powers. The Notebooks of Robert Frost, ed. by Robert Faggen (2006), is the first scholarly edition of Frost’s personal notebooks. Frank Lentricchia and Melissa Christensen Lentricchia, Robert Frost: A Bibliography, 1913–1974 (1976), gives reliable data concerning the publication of Frost’s works.

Elaine Barry (compiler), Robert Frost on Writing (1973), collects letters, prefaces, reviews, lectures, and interviews in which Frost offers ideas concerning the composition and purpose of poetry. George W. Nitchie, Human Values in the Poetry of Robert Frost (1960); and Reuben A. Brower, The Poetry of Robert Frost (1963), are excellent early critical studies. Richard Poirier, Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing (1977, reissued with a new afterword, 1990); and Judith Oster, Toward Robert Frost: The Reader and the Poet (1991), stand out among subsequent 20th-century studies. Other critical studies include Mark Richardson, The Ordeal of Robert Frost (1997); Tyler Hoffman, Robert Frost and the Politics of Poetry (2001); Tim Kendall, The Art of Robert Frost (2012); and George Monteiro, Robert Frost and the New England Renaissance (2015).

Useful overviews of Frost’s life and work are provided in Robert Faggen (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Robert Frost (2001); Nancy Lewis Tuten and John Zubizarreta (eds.), The Robert Frost Encyclopedia (2001); and Deirdre Fagan, Critical Companion to Robert Frost (2007).