ABSTRACT
After the death of Elinor Frost on March 20, 1938, a fellowship in her memory was established by Middlebury College for a young writer to attend the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. In 1938 Frost awarded the Elinor Frost Fellowship to Charles Foster, a graduate student at the University of Iowa. In 1939, at the sug gestion of Lesley Frost, the fellowship was given to Mrs. Lois Squire, to attend both the School of English and the Writers’ Conference. Her inability to handle the academic work resulted in a revision of how the fellowship was to be awarded. During the fall of 1939 Harry Owen and Frost worked out a plan by which students at the Bread Loaf School and Middlebury College who wished to apply for the fellowship were invited to submit poems in competition. These were screened by Harry Owen and submitted to Frost, who made the decision. I submitted a batch of poems, and in April 1940 Harry Owen informed me orally that Frost had awarded the Elinor Frost Fellowship to me for 1940. Owen confirmed this by letter on May 14, in which he referred to the award as “the Robert Frost Fellowship.”
