Frances Frost

Frances Frost
Born(1905-08-03)August 3, 1905
St. Albans, Vermont
DiedFebruary 11, 1959(1959-02-11) (aged 53)
New York City, New York
NationalityAmerican
EducationMiddlebury College, University of Vermont
Signature

Frances Mary Frost (August 3, 1905 – February 11, 1959) was an American poet, novelist, and children's writer. She was the mother of poet Paul Blackburn.[1]

Career

John C. Farrar, then-editor of The Bookman and a fellow Vermont native, accepted Frost's poem "Memory" in 1927 while she was still a junior at Middlebury College; it was the first of her poems to see professional publication.[2] Moving to Burlington, Vermont that same year, she worked as an editor for the Burlington Daily News, taught courses in poetry at the University of Vermont, and authored several collections of poetry—including Hemlock Wall (1929), for which she received the Yale Younger Poets Award.[3]

From 1931 to 1937 Frost was a summer resident at MacDowell, where she worked on further poetry collections including These Acres (1932).[4] During this period she served as the editor of the brief-lived American Poetry Journal (1933-1935).

Frost's poetry was widely-published[5] in her lifetime, appearing in The New York Herald Tribune, The Atlantic, Virginia Quarterly, The Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal,[6] The New Yorker, Harper's,[7] and Saturday Review, among others.[8][9] She saw eleven poetry collections published (four intended for children), as well as five novels and numerous children's books.[10]

Personal life

Frost was born in St. Albans, Vermont. She attended Middlebury College from 1923 to 1926 and graduated from the University of Vermont in 1931, earning a Bachelor of Philosophy.[11] At Middlebury she joined Delta Delta Delta.

She married William Gordon Blackburn of St. Albans on April 4, 1926, later filing for divorce in 1931.[12] They had two children, Paul Blackburn (U.S. poet) and Sister Marguerite Blackburn. She married Samuel Gaillard Stoney of Charleston, South Carolina, another resident of MacDowell, on September 18, 1933, whom she would also later divorce.[13] By 1939 she had moved to New York City.[14] In 1941 her son moved in with her and Noreen Carr Grace, her lover, in Greenwich Village after having lived primarily in the care of Frost's parents in St. Albans for several years.[15] After Frost's death to cancer in 1959, N. Carr Grace was the executrix of her estate[16] with co-executor Paul Blackburn.[17]

Her papers are held at University of California, San Diego,[18] and Yale University.

Awards

Works

Poetry

  • Hemlock Wall (Yale University Press, 1929); Yale Series of Younger Poets reprint, 1971
  • Blue Harvest (Houghton Mifflin, 1931)
  • These Acres (Houghton Mifflin, 1932)
  • Woman of this Earth (Houghton Mifflin, 1934)
  • Road to America (Farrar & Rinehart, 1937)
  • Mid-Century (New York: Creative Age Press, 1946), OCLC 2959913
  • Song For April (circa 1950) Found in an old scrapbook in 2020
  • This Rowdy Heart (Golden Quill, 1954)

Fiction

  • Innocent Summer (Farrar & Rinehart, 1936)
  • Yoke of Stars (Farrar & Rinehart, 1938) [19]
  • Uncle Snowball (Farrar & Rinehart, 1939)
  • Kate Trimingham (Farrar & Rinehart, 1940)
  • Village of Glass (Farrar & Rinehart, 1942)

Children's poetry

  • Pool in the Meadow: Poems for Young and Old (Houghton Mifflin, 1933)
  • Christmas in the Woods, illustrated by Aldren A. Watson (Harper & Brothers, 1942)
  • Christmas is Shaped Like Stars, illus. Garry MacKenzie (T. Y. Crowell, 1948)
  • The Little Whistler, illus. Roger Duvoisin (Whittlesey, 1949)
  • The Little Naturalist, illus. Kurt Werth (Whittlesey, 1959)

Children's fiction

  • Then Came Timothy, illus. Richard Bennett (Whittlesey, 1950)
  • The Cat that Went to College, illus. Morgan Dennis (Whittlesey,1951)
  • Little Fox, illus. Morgan Dennis (Whittlesey, 1952)
  • Amahl and the Night Visitors, illus. Duvoisin (Whittlesey, 1952) — narrative adaptation of the 1951 Christmas opera by Gian Carlo Menotti
  • Rocket Away!, illus. Paul Galdone (Whittlesey, 1953), foreword by Robert R. Coles, Chairman of the Hayden Planetarium[20]
  • Star of Wonder, illus. Galdone (Whittlesey, 1953), by Frost and Robert R. Coles[20]
  • The Little Donkey, illus. Oleg Zinger (Whittlesey, 1959) — translated from the work of Oleg Zinger and Ilse Windmuller

The Windy Foot series

  • Windy Foot at the County Fair, illus. Lee Townsend (McGraw-Hill, 1947)
  • Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot, illus. Townsend (Whittlesey, 1948)
  • Maple Sugar for Windy Foot, illus. Townsend (McGraw-Hill, 1950)
  • Fireworks for Windy Foot, illus. Townsend (McGraw-Hill, 1956)

As editor

  • American Poetry Journal (Leonard Twinem, 1933-1935)[21]
  • Legends of the United Nations (Whittlesey, 1943)[22]

References

  1. ^ Nelson, Julie. "Vermont Women's History - Vermont Historical Society" (PDF). womenshistory.vermont.gov. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-02-22. Retrieved 2016-04-09.
  2. ^ "A Literary Arrival". Burlington Daily News. 15 February 1930. Retrieved 13 December 2025.
  3. ^ "Frances Frost to Conduct Course in Poetry at University". Burlington Daily News. 2 June 1930. Retrieved 13 December 2025.
  4. ^ "Francis [sic] Frost Returns from Writers Colony". Burlington Daily News. 19 September 1931. Retrieved 13 December 2025.
  5. ^ Monroe, Harriet (December 1932). "Review: Too Easy Paces". Poetry. 41 (3): 163–164. Retrieved 13 December 2025.
  6. ^ "Poet, Former NEWS Writer Cancer Victim in New York". Vermont Sunday News. Saint Albans, VT. 15 December 1959. Retrieved 12 December 2025.
  7. ^ "Frances Frost | Harper's Magazine". Retrieved 2016-04-09.
  8. ^ Saturday review. Saturday Review Associates. 1939-01-01.
  9. ^ Voto, Bernard Augustine De; LLC, R. R. Bowker (1971-01-01). Saturday Review. Saturday Review Associates. ISBN 9780835203944.
  10. ^ Kukil, Karen V. (1988-08-01). "Guide to the Frances Frost Papers" (PDF). Retrieved 2025-12-12.
  11. ^ "FRANCES FROST, 53, A POET, NOVELIST; Author Who Also Wrote for Children Is Dead -- Had Won Shelley Award". The New York Times. 13 February 1959. Retrieved 13 December 2025.
  12. ^ "Frances Frost, Poet, Files Divorce Suit". The Vermont Tribune. Ludlow, VT. 2 September 1931.
  13. ^ "Frances Frost, Poetess, Bride of C.G. Storey". Rutland Daily Herald. 20 September 1933. Retrieved 13 December 2025.
  14. ^ Storrs Lee, William, ed. (1939). Bread Loaf Anthology. Middlebury, VT: Middlebury College Press. p. 169. Retrieved 6 February 2026.
  15. ^ West, Robert M. "Blackburn, Paul". American National Biography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 13 December 2025.
  16. ^ "Collection: Frances Frost Papers". Archives at Yale. Yale University. Retrieved 13 December 2025.
  17. ^ "Register of Paul Blackburn Papers - MSS 0004". UCSD Library. UCSD. Retrieved 13 December 2025.
  18. ^ "Collection Title: Frost (Frances) Papers". oac4.cdlib.org. Retrieved 2025-12-12.
  19. ^ "Yoke of Stars". Kirkus Reviews. New York City, New York, U.S.: Kirkus Media. 1 January 1938. Retrieved 2 November 2025.
  20. ^ a b Two children visit the Planetarium.
      Publisher advertisements of Spring and Fall 1953 books for children list these two books with one-sentence capsules: "David and Jean take the Planetarium's thrilling rocket trip to the moon." and "David and Jean travel back to the first Christmas to explore the mystery of the wonderful star." New York Herald Tribune, May 17 pE29 and November 15 pF16, 1953.
      See also Library of Congress and WorldCat records LCCN 53-5187 OCLC 1653271; LCCN 53-9011 OCLC 1418332.
  21. ^ "Catalog Record: American poetry journal". hathitrust.org. HathiTrust. Retrieved 13 December 2025.
  22. ^ LCCN 43-14971 OCLC 1216299; LCCN 50-506 OCLC 13169260.
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