The poem Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost is part of the European American literary period. This period refers to the English settling colonies and their influence upon American Literature. Virginia and New England were early Protestant communities that brought with them the traditions of European background. One tradition they brought with them was the English language. Diaries, Autobiographies, sermons, and accounts of voyages are innocent of imaginative material. Puritanism did not create a suitable environment for either drama or the novel. Most of the poetry was made into 17th and 18th century literature. Puritans lost some of their influence on culture as American Literature progressed. .
The 18th century also produced significant developments in poetry and fiction and not just political writings, diaries, and autobiographies. American Romanticism, also known as the American Renaissance, begins American literature direction towards independence from Europeans. The period after the Civil War up to World War I was known as the Realism and Naturalism period. The period known between the First World War, Depression, and World War II, was when all the different types of American Literature come of age. During this time poets such as Edwin Arlington Robinson, Carl Sandburg, and Robert Frost all explore the complications of modern life. One of the prominent European American poems is Robert Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening". (Jackson 9-11).
Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. Frost lived most of his life in New England. Many of Frost's poems were influenced by New England. After his father's death in 1885, when young Frost was 11, the family left California and settled in Massachusetts. Frost attended high school in that state, entered Dartmouth College, but remained less than one semester. Returning to Massachusetts, he taught school and worked in a mill and as a newspaper reporter.