Robert Frost stood at the intersection of nineteenth-century romanticism and twentieth-century modernism and made both his own. Frost adapted the genteel values and techniques of nineteenth-century poetry, but Barron argues that it was his commitment to realism that gave him popular as well as scholarly appeal and created his enduring legacy. This highly researched consideration of Frost investigates early innovative poetry that was published in popular magazines from 1894 to 1915 and reveals a voice of dissent that anticipated “The New Poetry” – a voice that would come to dominate American poetry as few others have.

In Roads Not Taken, Earl J. Wilcox and Jonathan N. Barron bring a new freshness and depth to the study of one of America's greatest poets. While some critics discounted Frost as a poet without technical skill, rhetorical complexity, or intellectual depth, over the past decade scholars have begun to view Robert Frost's work from many new perspectives. Critical hermeneutics, culture studies, feminism, postmodernism, and textual editing all have had their impact on readings of the poet's life and work. This collection of essays is the first to account for the variety of these new perceptions.

Appealing to a wide literary community, and in keeping with Frost's own poetic goals, these twelve essays fall into four distinct categories: gender, biography and cultural studies, the intertext, and poetics and theory.

All the contributors, many of whom have written books on Frost, are widely recognized scholars. Their diverse viewpoints and collective expertise make this volume of essays the most significant contribution to Frost criticism to be published in over twenty years.