Born: December 22, 1869, in Head Tide, Maine, United States
Died: April 6, 1935, in New York City, New York, United States
When Edwin Arlington Robinson was six months old, his family moved to Gardiner, Maine. This town was the inspiration for "Tilsbury," the fictional setting for many of his poems. From 1891 to 1893 attended Harvard University but left before finishing a degree. After his time at university, Robinson moved to New York where he worked as a timekeeper for the construction of the city's subway system.
Robinson's early works, The Torrent of the Night Before, published in 1896, and The Children of the Night, published in 1897, contain psychological portraits of citizens of Tilsbury. These character sketches continued in his Town Down the River, published in 1910.
Captain Craig and Other Poems, published in 1902, attracted the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt who gave it a great review. The President further gave Robinson a sinecure at the U.S. Customs House in New York which he held from 1905 to 1909.
After 1911 Robinson continued to live in New York and spent his summers at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Among other honors he won Pulitzer Prizes for: The Man Who Died Twice, published in 1924; Tristram, published in 1927; and Collected Poems, published in 1937.