Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 - January 29, 1963) was an American poet who frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. Frost is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution," and was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. The following recording is from a 1954 lecture Frost gave on poetry and writers Charles Dickens, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, Walter Savage Landor, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Percy Shelley, and John Masefield.