Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered

In this engaging study, William H. Pritchard sees Frost whole, demonstrating that Frost's life was indeed a literary one and that the essential fact about it was the poetry that came from it. Lawrance Thompson's controversial three-volume biography of Frost, published during the 1960s, lead many readers to believe that Frost was selfish, jealous, petty, and ruthlessly manipulative of others. While it doesn't attempt to revive the image of Frost as a benign, white-haired sage, this book presents him in a strikingly different light. In Pritchard's view, both Frost's life and his work offer an example of a powerful imagination and of human energies extravagant and compelling.