Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-318) and index.
Introduction -- The world that made Robert Frost -- The genteels, their values, and their publications -- Realism and genteel publishing -- An intellectual finds his way -- Robert Frost goes to school -- Robert Frost, realism, poetry, and American publishing of the 1890s -- "My butterfly : an elegy," "The birds do thus" -- Discovering realism : Frost, 1897-99 -- Robert Frost's poetry of ideas, 1906-8 -- "Trial by existence," "The lost faith," "A line-storm song," and "Across the Atlantic" -- Robert Frost's new poetic realism, 1909-10 -- "Into mine own," "The flower boat" -- Coming into his own -- Robert Frost, 1910-12 : "Reluctance" -- Robert Frost in England : A boy's will -- Robert Frost : public poet at last -- "The death of the hired man" -- Inventing a new poetry -- "A hundred collars," "The fear" -- Robert Frost, a realist in the magazines of modernism -- "The housekeeper" and "The code" -- Poet of the new American poetry -- North of Boston, "Putting in the seed" -- The American magazines of 1915 and the making of Robert Frost