|
|
| photo: Paul Fetters | |
Lesley Lee Francis is the granddaughter of Robert Frost. She received her A.B. degree from Radcliffe College and her Ph.D. in Romance Languages from Duke University. She became a professor of Spanish language, literature and history, and ran a summer program in Spain. Retired from the professional staff of the American Association of University Professors in Washington, D.C., she continues teaching and writing and helps organize the annual Frost Symposium. Dr. Francis has lectured and published extensively on her grandfather, including her biographical study, Robert Frost: An Adventure in Poetry, 1900-1918 (Transaction Publishers). She lives in Arlington, Va.; her three daughters and six grandchildren live nearby. Her new book, You Come Too: My Journey with Robert Frost, is available from the University of Virginia Press (December 3, 2015).
On your nightstand now:
Dead Wake by Erik Larson.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Grimms' Fairy Tales.
Your favorite authors:
Thomas Hardy, Leo Tolstoy, Miguel de Cervantes and Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Book you've faked reading:
Ulysses by James Joyce.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Holy Bible (King James Version).
Book you hid from your parents:
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
Book that changed your life:
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
Favorite line from a book:
"I am the master of my fate:/ I am the captain of my soul" --William Ernest Henley's Invictus
Five books you'll never part with:
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes; Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky; The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy; Dubliners by James Joyce; The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.
Three of your favorite poems:
"Evangeline" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Intimations of Immortality" by William Wordsworth and "Iris by Night" by Robert Frost.