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Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

LINKS

http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=402

This link connects you to the Academy of American Poets. Here you will find an exhibit on Edwin Arlington Robinson including a biography, online primary texts, criticism, bibliographic information, and additional links.

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/robinson/robinson.htm

This link connects you to the Modern American Poetry site, edited by Professor Cary Nelson at the University of Illinois, Urbana. Here you will find an exhibit of secondary criticism, bibliographic information, and external links on Edwin Arlington Robinson.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in Head Tide, Maine, Robinson was the son of Edward Robinson, a timber merchant, and Mary Elizabeth Palmer. He grew up in the town of Gardiner, which is the setting for his poems on life in "Tilbury Town." The third of three sons, Robinson pursued poetry as early as age eleven before attending Harvard College from 1891 through 1983. Robinson's father died in 1892 and the Robinsons plummeted into bankruptcy over the next seven years, forcing the poet to leave Harvard. Robinson published The Torrent and the Night Before the year his mother died in 1896. The next year he brought out a revised version of this volume entitled The Children of the Night. Poems such as "Richard Cory," "Luke Havergal," and "Aaron Stark" witness to the bleak social lives and tragic circumstances of Robinson's "Tilbury Town" characters. In 1897, Robinson left Gardiner for New York City where he lived in poverty owing to the collapse of his family finances. After publishing Captain Craig in 1902, Robinson made a sporadic living from temporary work eventually receiving, through Kermit Roosevelt, a New York Customs House job in 1905 that allowed him to sustain himself while writing. In 1909, Robinson published The Town Down the River and quit the Customs House, spending summers at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire after 1911. His literary reputation grew with the publication in 1916 of The Man Against the Sky and with Amy Lowell's favorable chapter on his work in her book of essays entitled Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (1917). By 1921, he had won the first Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems followed by a second Pulitzer for The Man Who Died Twice (1924). Throughout the 1920s, Robinson published actively with such major volumes as Avon's Harvest (1921); Roman Bartholow (1925); Dionysus in Doubt (1925); Cavender's House (1929); Matthias at the Door (1931); a collection of shorter poems, Nicodemus (1932); Talifer (1933); and Amaranth (1934). His last volume King Jasper was published posthumously the year he died in 1935.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Boswell, Jeanetta. Edwin Arlington Robinson and the Critics: A Bibliography of Secondary Sources with Selected Annotations. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1988.

Cary, Richard. Appreciation of Edwin Arlington Robinson: 28 Interpretive Essays. Waterville, ME: Colby College Press, 1969.

—. Early Reception of Edwin Arlington Robinson: The First Twenty Years. Waterville, ME: Colby College Press, 1974.

Joyner, Nancy Carol. Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Reference Guide. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1978.

Morris, Lloyd R. The Poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson: An Essay in Appreciation. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1969.

Winers, Yvor. Edwin Arlington Robinson. New York: New Directions, 1971.

SECONDARY SOURCES BY CHAPTER