Restrictions to Access

No restrictions, except for 1 letter from Frost to Lyons that is under seal until 1 January 2020.

This collection contains additional materials that are not processed and are currently not available to researchers. For information about access to these materials, contact Research and Instructional Services staff. Please be advised that preparing unprocessed materials for access can be a lengthy process.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Clifford and Gladys Lyons Collection of Robert Frost Materials #4429, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received by the Rare Book Collection from Clifford and Gladys Lyons of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1981.

Transferred to the Southern Historical Collection in August 1985.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• American poetry--20th century.
• American poetry--Research.
• Frost, Robert, 1874-1963.
• Lyons, Clifford P. (Clifford Pierson), 1904-1992.
• Lyons, Gladys.
• Nash, Ogden, 1902-1971.
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Clifford and Gladys Lyons met Robert Frost and his family when they were neighbors in Gainesville, Florida, in the fall of 1937. The Frosts were spending the winter there, and Clifford Lyons was teaching English at the University of Florida. During World War II, when Lyons was stationed near Boston, he and his wife frequently exchanged visits with Frost, who was living in Cambridge.

Clifford Lyons joined the faculty of the English Department of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1946; it was largely due to their friendship that Robert Frost lectured annually at U.N.C. for the next fifteen years. Frost stayed with the Lyonses at those times, and dedicated several poems in this collection to them.

Over the years, the Lyonses acquired and saved a variety of materials relating to Robert Frost: books and pamphlets by him, correspondence, tapes, photographs, and numerous clippings about him and his work. In 1981, they donated these materials to the Rare Book Collection of the Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1985, the Rare Book Collection transferred all but the published works among the Frost/Lyons materials to the Southern Historical Collection.

These papers consist of items collected by Clifford and Gladys Lyons in the course of their friendship with Robert Frost. They include handwritten copies of poems by Frost, correspondence with him and with his daughter, Lesley Frost Ballantine, and his granddaughter, Lesley Francis Zimic.

A large portion of the material is Gladys Lyons's newspaper clipping file of articles pertaining to Frost, especially to his annual appearances at U.N.C. There are also pamphlets from Middlebury College in Vermont, relating to Frost's instructorship at its annual Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Photographs, tape recordings of Frost lecturing, and transcripts of those tapes comprise most of the rest of the collection.

• T-4429/1A-12
• P-4429/1-74