Lyons, Clifford P. (Clifford Pierson), 1904-1992

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.