Robert Frost (Magill Book Reviews)

Robert Frost was not fortunate in his posthumous biographical treatment. A series of debunking biographies by Lawrance Thompson and Jeffrey Meyer called into question his character and integrity, presenting him as a monster of selfishness and egotism. Now Robert Frost: A Life, a revisionist biography by Middlebury College professor Jay Parini, attempts to set the record straight.

While not breaking any new ground, Parini’s biography of Frost offers a fair and balanced treatment of the poet’s life. In particular, Parini shows what tremendous courage and resourcefulness Frost showed in redeeming a life of hardships through his commitment to poetry. His art may well have saved him from madness. Parini emphasizes Frost’s devotion to his wife Elinor and their four children, especially during the decade they spent on the Derry farm in New Hampshire, while he was learning his trade as a poet. Equally impressive was their courage in taking their family to England from 1912-1915 so that Frost could find a publisher for his work.

The judicious skill and insights of Robert Frost: A Life demonstrates that biography is a fine art that does not depend on accumulation of facts alone, but on the biographer’s skill as storyteller and interpreter of life. Parini does not avoid the hard facts of poverty, ill health, mental instability, and suicide that run through Frost’s family history, but he manages to show how Frost raised his own and his family’s life above mere sordidness through a strong-willed and high-minded dedication to poetry.

Robert Frost: A Life is an admittedly partisan biography, but Parini does a great service to all admirers of Frost by reaffirming the value of his life and work.

Sources for Further Study

Booklist 95 (January 1, 1999): 790.

Insight on the News 15 (May 24, 1999): 36.

Library Journal 124 (February 15, 1999): 150.

National Review 51 (May 3, 1999): 52.

The New York Review of Books 46 (October 21, 1999): 17.

The New York Times Book Review 104 (April 25, 1999): 13.

Publishers Weekly 246 (February 15, 1999): 93.

Time 153 (April 5, 1999): 69.

The Times Literary Supplement, January 23, 1999, p. 29.

The Yale Review 87 (October, 1999): 118.