Robert Frost (1874–1963) was without question the most popular American poet of the twentieth century. Born in San Francisco, Frost moved to New England with his mother when his father died. He graduated at the top of his high school class, sharing the position of valedictorian with Elinor White, whom he later married. At the age of seventeen, he published his first poem. After a brief stint at Dartmouth, he worked as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill, a cobbler, a schoolteacher, and a journalist. Later, he entered Harvard but left after two years to try farming. In 1912, Frost took his family to England, and it was there that his poetry first found a major audience with the publication of A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914).

After he returned to the United States, Frost began to achieve financial stability from the sale of his books. He taught and lectured at various colleges, including Dartmouth, Amherst, Harvard, and the University of Michigan. He was awarded Pulitzer Prizes in 1924, 1931, 1937, and 1943 and received honorary degrees from many universities. In 1961, he recited his poem "The Gift Outright" at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth president of the United States. In his later years, Frost also made several goodwill trips for the U.S. State Department.

Frost's many popular works, most of which deal with the character, people, and landscape of New England, include Mountain Interval (1916), New Hampshire (1923), West-Running Brook (1928), A Way Out (1929), Collected Poems (1930), A Further Range (1936), A Witness Tree (1942), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962). Frost also wrote two plays in blank verse, A Masque of Reason (1945) and A Masque of Mercy (1947). Although rooted in New England subject matter, Frost's work goes beyond mere regionalism. The careful local observations and homely details of his poems often have deeper symbolic meanings. The poems are concerned with people's tragedies and fears, their reactions to the complexities of life, and their ultimate acceptance of life's burdens.