Edwin Arlington Robinson
Edwin Arlington Robinson
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1869 – 1935
1869 – 1935
Winner of the first Pulitzer Prize ever Awarded for Poetry
Edwin Arlington Robinson in 1888 at age 18 (5)
Virtual Visit: Click here to take a tour of Robinson’s Gardiner, Maine, including a virtual visit to the Robinson home (#11 on the map) (7)
Emma (Shepherd) Robinson, said to be the love of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s life, married his older brother Herman ~ Click here to read more about Robinson’s loves on pages 6-8 of the introduction of this biography. (Click on Preview and try the new Google Books reader to read with ease online) (8)
Click here for a description of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s home in Gardiner, Maine and its literary significance ~ from the National Registry of Historic Places (9)
Photographs taken by Mrs. DeCamilla during a trip to Robinson’s hometown Gardiner, Maine and the Gardiner Public Library in early spring, 2020
Virtual Visit: Click on the photo and the “learn more” button to check out the Veltin Cottage where Robinson spent 24 summers Robinson writing poetry at the artist retreat MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire from 1911 until his death in 1935. “MacDowell knew what he was about,” Robinson wrote to a friend. “One summer of it in one of the isolated studios with an open wood fire, would undo you for life.” (10)
Click here to discover how Robinson came to be known as “The Subway Poet” (Chapter section “Down and Out”, pages 222-226 on the new Google Books Reader) (11)
The New York City subway system as it appeared when Robinson worked
there checking loads of shale during the building of the New York subway in 1900 (12 & 13)
Click here to read the article “Poet and President” and discover how Robinson was rescued from a dreary life working in the NYC subway after President Roosevelt’s son Kermit read The Children of the Night while at boarding school (Kermit with President Roosevelt in 1910) (14)
Click here to read a selection of Robinson’s poems from The Children of the Night including Richard Cory, considered Robinson’s most famous poem. This is the book Kermit Roosevelt sent to his father President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House (15)
Click here to read the review President Theodore wrote for Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Children of the Night in the weekly Outlook in 1905 (16)
Click here to read a short excerpt from the type-written memoirs of book editor Louise Seaman Bechtel describing the day Edwin Arlington Robinson came to the offices of MacMillan Publishers in New York City. (1) Bechel worked at MacMillan when they published Robinson’s Tristram in 1927. Shown here is New York City during the same time period, the late 1920s. Tristram earned Robinson his 3rd Pulitzer Prize (17 & 18)
Click here to see the Pulitzer Prize winners the year Robinson won his 3rd Pulitzer (19)
Reading: Click here for a wonderful selection of Robinson’s poems along with background stories (20)
Click here to read a selection of letters between Edwin Arlington Robinson and Edith Brower on the new Google Books reader (the letters begin on page 15) ~ According to a review at Harvard University Press, Edith Bower of Pennsylvania was one of Robinson’s first admirers
“The letters begin when the twenty-seven-year-old poet writes gratefully to the stranger who has expressed appreciation of his first, privately printed, book of poems, The Torrent and the Night Before. Soon he was carrying on an intense correspondence, baring his soul—safely, he believed, because the woman he described as “infernally bright and not at all ugly,” with “something of a literary reputation,” was “too old to give me a chance to bother myself with any sentimental uneasiness.” (She was twenty-one years his senior.) Continually reflecting his laconic, self-deprecating Yankee spirit, the letters range from the uncontrollable outpourings of a lonely individual, desperate for encouragement and understanding, to brief words of greeting or farewell.” (21 & 22)
Click here and zoom in to read Robinson’s obituary in the Boston Globe, 1935 (23)
Read about the monument dedicated to Robinson, located in Gardiner, Maine (24)
Photo Credits and Sources used from top to bottom of page:
1. https://townline.org/review-potpourri-edwin-arlington-robinson/
2. https://quotefancy.com/quote/1386511/Edwin-Arlington-Robinson-Were-it-not-for-love-Poor-life-would-be-a-ship-not-worth
3. Joyner, Nancy Carol. “Edwin Arlington Robinson.” American Poets, 1880-1945: Third Series, edited by Peter Quartermain, Gale, 1987. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 54. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1200001911/LitRC?u=brun84057&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=472ff328. Accessed 21 Mar. 2022.
4. https://www.cprw.com/Tracy/robinson.htm
5. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Edwin_Arlington_Robinson
6. https://www.earobinson.com/pages/HisLife.html
7. https://www.earobinson.com/pages/map.html
8. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Edwin_Arlington_Robinson/G7qmcygV8coC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=a+poet%27s+life+robinson&printsec=frontcover
9. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NHLS/71000070_text
10. https://www.macdowellcolony.org/artists/edwin-arlington-robinson
11. https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/hEXvJoo-EDIC?hl=en&gbpv=1
12. tunnelingonline.com/tunneling-historical-perspective/
13. https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/subway/new-york/
14. http://www.brunswick.k12.me.us/bhslibrary/files/2020/05/Roosevelt-and-Robinson.pdf
15. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/313/313-h/313-h.htm#link2H_4_0002
16. https://www.mondaymorningmemo.com/roosevelt-review-of-robinson-in-the-outlook/
17. http://www.travelphant.com/top-10-highest-hotels-in-new-york/
18. http://www.brunswick.k12.me.us/bhslibrary/files/2020/05/Screen-Shot-2020-05-07-at-2.34.44-PM-2.png
19. https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/1928
20. https://www.earobinson.com/pages/SelectedWorks.html
21. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Edwin_Arlington_Robinson_s_Letters_to_Ed/ligIAkn_idQC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=edwin+robinson+letters&printsec=frontcover
22. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674240353
23. http://www.brunswick.k12.me.us/bhslibrary/files/2020/05/Robinson-Obit-2.pdf
24. https://www.earobinson.com/pages/sites/site17.html
25. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/881/edwin-arlington-robinson
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