Historical figure · Pearson Edexcel International GCSE revision on Incandio

Robert Frost

Who Took The Comfort Out · Poet · 1874–1963

The American poet read as a gentle rural voice, who wrote some of the coldest endings in the language and won four Pulitzer Prizes doing it.

Defend these ideas against Frost

Incandio is a free revision platform for the Pearson Edexcel International GCSE, and on it a topic counts as mastered only once you have learned it, proved it in questions, taught it back and defended it against the person with the strongest claim on it. Robert Frost is that person for one topic on the course:

• 'Out, Out—' — English Language A · the anthology

Who was Frost?

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874 and taken east to Massachusetts at eleven, after his father died. He left Dartmouth, later left Harvard, worked at a mill and as a teacher, and farmed at Derry in New Hampshire without much success. For twenty years almost nothing he wrote was published. In 1912 he sold the farm and moved his family to England, where A Boy's Will and North of Boston were taken seriously by editors and reviewers who had never heard of him; he also met Edward Thomas, whom he pushed into writing poetry and who was killed at Arras in 1917. Frost returned to America in 1915 to find himself famous, and Mountain Interval followed in 1916. It contains 'Out, Out—', whose title comes from Macbeth and whose material came from an accident Frost knew of: a boy of about sixteen, a buzz saw, a hand, and a death from shock. The poem ends not on the boy but on the people who, since there was nothing more to be done, turned back to their affairs. Frost went on to win four Pulitzer Prizes, taught for decades, and read at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. He was considerably more competitive and more careful about managing his reputation than the homely New England image suggested, and the image was one he did nothing to correct.

Major achievements

• A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914), both first published in England
• Mountain Interval (1916), containing 'Out, Out—'
• Four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry
• Made ordinary American speech carry blank verse without sounding like verse

Life in brief

• 1874 — Born in San Francisco: Taken east to Massachusetts at eleven.
• 1900 — Derry: Begins farming in New Hampshire; publishes almost nothing for years.
• 1912 — Sails for England: Sells the farm and takes the family across.
• 1914 — North of Boston: Published in London, and reviewed seriously.
• 1915 — Returns to America: Arrives home already famous.
• 1916 — Mountain Interval: Contains 'Out, Out—'.
• 1961 — Reads at the inauguration: For John F. Kennedy, in January.

Explore the life of Frost — five chapters

1. Twenty Years of Almost Nothing — Two universities left and a farm that did not pay
2. Selling the Farm — England, and a reputation made abroad
3. 'Out, Out—' — A title from Macbeth over an accident on a farm
4. The Sound of Sense — A theory about how a sentence carries meaning before the words do
5. The Wrong Reputation — Read as comfort by people who had not looked

Read the five-chapter life of Robert Frost →

Begin

• Start a conversation with Frost — a dramatised, historically grounded AI portrayal
• Read the Historical Brief
• Explore the life of Frost — five chapters
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