Bread Loaf School of English

The Bread Loaf School of English is the graduate school of English at Middlebury College. The School offers graduate courses in literature, creative writing, the teaching of writing, and theater. Classes are held for six weeks each summer. The School awards two degrees. Each year, approximately 90 students earn a Master of Arts (M.A.) and 5 or fewer students earn a Master of Letters (M.Litt), for which an M.A. is a prerequisite. Each degree can be completed in four to five intensive summers spread over different campuses.

The School was established in 1920 at the College's mountain campus in Ripton, Vermont near Bread Loaf Mountain and has since expanded to campuses at Lincoln College at the University of Oxford, St. John's College in New Mexico, and the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

Around 80% of students are middle school and high school teachers. The student-to-faculty ratio is 10:1.

In 1915, the first of the Middlebury Language Schools was founded. As the German School and, subsequently, other Language Schools were founded, Middlebury decided to begin a similar school for the teaching of English literature. The Bread Loaf School of English was established in 1920.

Poet Robert Frost was involved with the first half-century of the Bread Loaf School. He purchased an 150 acre farm in the immediate vicinity, now owned by Middlebury College and known as the Robert Frost Farm, and subsequently spent more than 40 summers lecturing at the School.

In a 1960 Paris Review interview, Frost was asked, "You were a cofounder of the school, weren't you?" He responded:

They say that. I think I had more to do with the starting of the conference. In a very casual way, I said to the president [of Middlebury], “Why don’t you use the place for a little sociability after the school is over?” I thought of no regular business—no pay, no nothing, just inviting literary people, a few, for a week or two. The kitchen staff was still there. But then they started a regular business of it.

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