Robinson, Edwin Arlington (1869–1935), was reared in Gardiner, Me., the prototype of his Tilbury Town, and after studying at Harvard (1891–93) was employed in New York City. His first volume of poems, The Torrent and the Night Before (1896), was privately printed. In these early poems, strongly influenced by his reading of Hardy, he presents the first of his spare, incisive portraits of the people of his Tilbury Town, marked by a dry New England manner that proved cryptic to his few readers. One reviewer stated that “The world is not beautiful to him, but a prison house,” to which Robinson later replied: “The world is not a ‘prison‐house,’ but a kind of spiritual kindergarten where bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.” Some of the poems of this book were reprinted, with additions, in The Children of the Night (1897), containing the “Credo” in which the poet recognizes that there is “not a glimmer” for one who “welcomes when he fears, the black and awful chaos of the night”; but states that he feels “the coming glory of the Light” through an intuition of a spiritual guidance that transcends the life of the senses. Many of the other poems are psychological portraits, similar in form to those of Browning, including such character studies as those of the wealthy and wise Richard Cory, who committed suicide for lack of a positive reason for being; Cliff Klingenhagen, with his mysterious ironic philosophy of life; the spiteful miser Aaron Stark; Luke Havergal, the bereaved lover; and romantic old John Evereldown.

The Children of the Night impressed Theodore Roosevelt, and, upon the publication of Captain Craig (1902), the President helped Robinson escape from work as inspector of subway construction to a clerkship in the New York Custom House (1905–10). Included in Captain Craig are such character studies as “Isaac and Archibald” and “The Book of Annandale,” while The Town Down the River (1910) contains “Miniver Cheevy,” How Annandale Went Out, and other portraits. After this date, Robinson was able to give his entire time to poetry, much of which he wrote during his annual summer residence at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. His next works were plays: Van Zorn (1914), a “comedy” whose titular figure, mysteriously able to learn the secrets of others, aids in solving their personal problems; and The Porcupine (1915), a tragedy founded on a similar psychological situation.

“The Man Against the Sky” is the title piece of a collection of poems (1916) setting forth the author's philosophy of life with striking symbolic power. Other poems in the volume include “Flammonde,” “Cassandra,” and the Shakespearean study “Ben Johnson Entertains a Man from Stratford.” With Merlin (1917) he began the Arthurian trilogy completed by Lancelot (1920) and Tristram (1927, Pulitzer Prize), in which he studied the characters as individuals who act according to their particular passions, independently of supernatural powers. The Three Taverns (1920) contains poems further illustrating this attitude, such as “Rahel to Varnhagen” and “Rembrandt to Rembrandt,” and further Tilbury portraits such as Mr. Flood's Party, describing the pathetically humorous old town drunkard. Avon's Harvest (1921) traces the consequences of an obsessive hatred and fear on a sensitive mind, and a volume of Collected Poems of this year won a Pulitzer Prize.

Robinson's steady production of verse continued with Roman Bartholow (1923), a dramatic narrative presenting a subtle psychological analysis of a sick soul; The Man Who Died Twice (1924, Pulitzer Prize), telling the tragic story of a man's dissipation of his artistic genius; Dionysus in Doubt, the title poem in a collection (1925), and “Demos and Dionysus,” criticizing the standardization and materialism of equalitarian society, which the poet found inimical to “romance and love and art” and to the development in a transcendental fashion of the individual “self and soul”; Cavender's House (1929), a blank‐verse dialogue between Cavender and the ghost of the wife he murdered for a supposed infidelity; The Glory of the Nightingales (1930), a verse narrative concerned with the rivalry between two friends for the love of a woman, and their later reconciliation; Matthias at the Door (1931), a narrative in which the chief figure, through bitter disillusion, loses his egocentric complacency and learns to understand others; Nicodemus (1932), adding ten poems to the body of his work, including four on Biblical themes; Talifer (1933), a narrative of modern life, which shows the poet in a novel mood of optimistic cheer; Amaranth (1934), a somber narrative concerned with a group of frustrated artists; and King Jasper (1935), a poetic narrative that constitutes a final statement of Robinson's sense of the tragedy of human life in a chaotic world, and of his unfaltering mystic faith in a “glimmer” of light beyond. He collected his Sonnets, 1889–1927 (1928), and a selection from his letters was published in 1940.

As an heir of the New England traditions of Puritanism and Transcendentalism, with their emphasis upon the individual, Robinson has been termed a sober Transcendentalist who dealt primarily with the ethical conflicts within the individual and measured the value of the isolated person by his truth to himself. With the reserve typical of the New Englander, he most frequently employed the objective form of dramatic monologue, and, with the traditionalism inherent in his background, confined his experimentation to the use of common speech rhythms, rather than to the creation of new stanzaic forms. His quality of mind is organically expressed by his style, which itself quietly fuses tradition with originality, and romance with realism.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), American poet and playwright, was a leading literary figure of the early 20th century.

Edwin Arlington Robinson was born in Head Tide, Maine, on Dec. 22, 1869. He grew up in nearby Gardiner, which became the "Tilbury Town" of his poems. The story is told that for many months after his birth his parents called him "the baby" because they had not wanted a boy. The name "Edwin" was pulled from a hat by a stranger who happened to live in Arlington, Mass. Robinson hated his name, for it signified to him the accidental nature of man's fate. After studying at Harvard from 1891 to 1893, he returned to Gardiner.

Robinson published his first volume of poetry, The Torrent and the Night Before (1896), at his own expense. His early verse was largely ignored. In 1905 the struggling poet was presented with a way out of his oppressive poverty when President Theodore Roosevelt, who admired Captain Craig (1902), secured him a clerkship in the New York City Customs House. He resigned from this post in 1910 to devote himself to writing.

Eventually Robinson found a patron in Mrs. Edward MacDowell, who owned the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire; here, from 1911, Robinson spent his summers. His talent was finally recognized with The Man against the Sky (1916). His prose dramas, Van Zorn (1914) and The Porcupine (1915), which anticipate in many ways the plays of T. S. Eliot, are virtually unknown today, yet they are possibly more worthwhile than many of his celebrated long poetic narratives, such as King Jasper (1935).

Robinson's late poetry was both symbolic and experimental, but his reputation chiefly rests on the austere, ironic "Tilbury Town" portraits, which express his feeling that all men are "children of the night" who find no star to guide them and get no answers to their questions. "Luke Havergal," "Cliff Klingenhagen," "George Crabbe," "Miniver Cheevy," "Richard Cory," "Reuben Bright," "Bewick Finzer," "Eros Turannos," and "Mr. Flood's Party" remain incisive explorations of early-20th-century despair.

Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry three times. He died in New York City on April 5, 1935.

Further Reading

The standard edition of Robinson's verse is the Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson (1937). A shorter edition is Selected Poems of E. A. Robinson (1965). His letters are contained in Selected Letters of Edwin Arlington Robinson (1940); Letters of Edwin Arlington Robinson to Howard George Schmitt (1945); Untriangulated Stars: Letters … to Harry deForest Smith, 1890-1905 (1947); and Edwin Arlington Robinson: Selected Early Poems and Letters (1960).

Recommended studies of Robinson are Ellsworth Barnard, Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Critical Study (1952); Edwin S. Fussell, Edwin Arlington Robinson: The Literary Background of a Traditional Poet (1954); Wallace Anderson, Edwin ArlingtonRobinson: A Critical Introduction (1967); and Louis Coxe, Edwin Arlington Robinson: The Life of Poetry (1969). See also the section on Robinson in Hyatt H. Waggoner, American Poets from the Puritans to the Present (1968).

Additional Sources

Burton, David Henry, Edwin Arlington Robinson: stages in a New England poet's search, Lewiston: E. Mellen Press, 1987.

Joan Robinson (1903-1983) and George Shackle (1903-1992), Aldershot, Hants, England; Brookfield, Vt., USA: E. Elgar Pub. Co., 1992.

The Joan Robinson legacy, Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1991.

Turner, Marjorie Shepherd, Joan Robinson and the Americans, Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1989.

Brode, Patrick, Sir John Beverley Robinson: bone and sinew of the compact, Toronto; Buffalo: Published for the Osgoode Society by University of Toronto Press, 1984. □

Edwin Arlington Robinson 1869–1935, American poet, b. Head Tide, Maine, attended Harvard (1891–93). At his death, many critics considered Robinson the greatest poet in the United States. He is now best remembered for his short poems characterizing various residents of "Tilbury Town," which was based on his hometown, Gardiner, Maine. His first volume of verse, The Torrent and the Night Before (1896), was revised and reissued as The Children of the Night (1897). In 1899, Robinson settled in New York City. Although his third volume of verse, Captain Craig (1902), was poorly received by critics, it attracted the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt, who secured Robinson a job in the New York customshouse. He finally achieved critical recognition with The Man against the Sky (1916). Thereafter he concentrated on long psychological narrative poems, such as Avon's Harvest (1921), The Man Who Died Twice (1924; Pulitzer Prize), Dionysus in Doubt (1925), and the Arthurian romances Merlin (1917), Lancelot (1920), and Tristram (1928; Pulitzer Prize). A quiet, introverted man, Robinson never married and became legendary for his reclusiveness. Although his later poetry reveals a deep consciousness of social issues, an experimentation with symbolism, and an increasingly optimistic view of human destiny, his most lasting work is probably his early verse. "Miniver Cheevy" and "Richard Cory" are among the most famous of his brief, dramatic poems. Volumes of his collected poems were published in 1921 (Pulitzer Prize), 1937, and years after his work fell out of popular and critical fashion, in 1999.

Bibliography: See his letters, ed. by R. Torrence (1940, repr. 1980), D. Sutcliffe (1947), and R. Cary (1968); biographies by C. P. Smith (1965) and L. O. Coxe (1969); studies by Y. Winters (1946, repr. 1971) and D. Burton (1986).

Robinson, Edwin Arlington (1869–1935) US poet. His first volume of poems, The Torrent and The Night Before (1896), was followed by The Town down the River (1910), The Man against the Sky (1916), and The Three Taverns (1920). He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1921, 1924, and 1927.