Edwin Arlington Robinson was born on the 22nd December 1869 in Tide in Lincoln County, Maine.

His childhood was described by him as ‘stark and unhappy’. His name was drawn out of a hat from a fellow vacationer from Arlington Massachusetts when fellow holiday makers decided that his parents had waited long enough at 6 months to name him. It was a name he despised and reflects the station to which his parents had placed him; their great hope at his birth were that he was a girl to complement their two sons.

His pessimistic mood carried him to adulthood and a doomed encounter with Emma Loehen Shepherd who constantly encouraged his poetry. Edwin was thought too young to be her companion and so his elder, middle brother, Herman was assigned to her. It was a great blow to Edwin and during their marriage on February 12th, 1890, he stayed home and wrote ‘Cortege’

In the fall of 1891 Edwin entered Harvard, taking classes in English, French and Shakespeare. He felt at ease with the Ivy League and made great efforts to be published in one of the Harvard literary journals. Indeed, the Harvard Advocate published ‘Ballade of a Ship’ but then his career appeared to stall. His father died and although he returned to Harvard for a second year it was to be his last but also the start of some life-long friendships.

In 1893 he returned to Gardiner Maine as the man of the household. Herman by this time had become an alcoholic, having suffered business failures, and was now to become estranged from Emma.

Edwin began farming whilst he wrote and quickly developed a close relationship with Emma who had now moved back to Gardiner after Herman’s death with her children.

Although he proposed twice, he was rejected and in consequence moved to New York to start afresh.

But it was a salutary experience. Although surrounded by artists he had little money and life was difficult.

In 1896 he published his own book, ‘The Torrent and the Night Before’, paying 100 dollars for 500 copies. Edwin wanted it to be a surprise for his Mother, but days before its arrival she died of diphtheria.

His second volume, ‘The Children of the Night’, had a wider circulation. At the behest of President Roosevelt, whose son was an avid admirer, he was given a job in 1905 at the New York Customs Office although it appears his real job was “to help American letters”.

Either way his success began to widen and his influence proper. During the 1920s he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on three separate occasions. In 1922 for ‘Collected Poems’ again in 1925 for ‘The Man Who Died Twice’ and finally in 1928 for ‘Tristram’.

During the last twenty years of his life he became a regular summer resident at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, where he became the object of fascination by several women. But he never married.

Edwin Arlington Robinson died of cancer on the 6th April 1935 in the New York Hospital in New York. He was 65.