“Aimed at explaining Robert Frost’s significance in the publishing industry and in the political environment of his time.”—Pennsylvania Literary Journal
“Responding to a poetic milieu that overlooked instruction for delight, Frost—as Barron argues—gave poetry a ‘realist renewal,’ reclaiming poetry’s ability to critique society. It was also the crucible of realism that allowed Frost to simultaneously strive for both popularity and intellectual appeal, leading to his enduring resonance in American culture.”—American Literature
“Tackles some of the myriad ways in which thought played out empirically throughout the poet’s long life.”—American Literary Realism
“An engaging combination of literary history, biography, and critical reading. This is a superb account of Frost’s literary emergence, his brilliant navigation of complex literary and cultural waters, and of an important moment in American literary culture. The book also leaves readers with an understanding of a Frost who worked within his time but produced something much, much greater than his moment.”—Robert Faggen, author of Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin
“A painstaking, highly researched, and a welcome reconsideration of Frost’s early poems in A Boy’s Will and North of Boston. It is an ambitious literary sociology, as it bears on American writing in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, along with a with close reading and appreciative speculation about a number of poems.”—William Pritchard, author of Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered