Robert Frost (Magill Book Reviews)
At a glance:
- Author: Jeffrey Meyers
- First Published: 1996
- Type of Work: Literary Biography
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: Love or romance, Authors or writers, Literature, Marriage, Friendship, Poetry or poets, Adultery, Creative process, Bereavement or grief
- Locales: Boston, MA, England, San Francisco, CA, New Hampshire, Amherst, MA, Lawrence, MA
Robert Frost has long stood in need of a balanced and objective biography. Frost’s “official” biographer, Lawrance Thompson, came to dislike his subject and his biography casts an unfair and unfavorable light on Frost’s life and work. Frost scholars have long noted the biases and omissions in Thompson’s biography, particularly in regard to Frost’s later years, and have called for a revision. Now Jeffrey Meyers has published a new, full-length biography that corrects the defects in Thompson’s work and sheds new light on Frost’s career.
Perhaps the most startling new information involves the story of Frost’s romantic involvement, after his wife’s death in 1938, with his secretary, Kathleen Morrison, who was married to Harvard lecturer Ted Morrison. Depressed and despondent, Frost turned to Kay Morrison for emotional support and gradually became dependent upon her not only to look after his welfare, but to take the place of his wife Elinor, and she provided the inspiration for some of his most famous love poems, such as “The Silken Tent.” Thompson glossed over the details of this tacit relationship, but with the cooperation of Morrison’s daughter, Meyers is able to tell the full story of this remarkable quarter-century affair between Frost and a woman more than thirty years younger than himself.
Meyers’ biography also deals fully with Frost’s later career and documents the emergence of Frost’s public persona during the last two decades of his life, including his friendship with President John F. Kennedy and his remarkable trip to the Soviet Union in 1963, when he met with Premier Nikita Khrushchev. A fair and balanced biographical portrait, Jeffrey Meyer’s ROBERT FROST is destined to become the authoritative life of this great American poet.
Sources for Further Study
American Scholar. LXV, Spring, 1996, p. 219.
Booklist. XCII, April 1, 1996, p. 1339.
Chicago Tribune. May 26, 1996, XIV, p. 1.
Library Journal. CXXI, April 15, 1996, p. 89.
Los Angeles Times Book Review. May 19, 1996, p. 10.
The New York Times. April 23, 1996, p. C16.
The New York Times Book Review. CI, May 19, 1996, p. 8.
Publishers Weekly. CCXLIII, February 19, 1996, p. 193.
San Francisco Chronicle. April 28, 1996, p. REV3.
The Times Literary Supplement. August 30, 1996, p. 4.
The Virginia Quarterly Review. LXXII, Autumn, 1996, p. 122.
The Wall Street Journal. April 30, 1996, p. A16.
The Washington Post Book World. XXVI, August 11, 1996, p. 7.
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