Bibliography of Publications by and about Edwin Arlington Robinson
compiled and annotated by Danny D. Smith,
Chairman, Special Collections Committee, Gardiner Library Association

Publications of Edwin Arlington Robinson by date of publication

Title Page of Torrent and Night Before

The Torrent and The Night Before. Cambridge, Mass.: Privately printed, 1896. A facsimile publication was issued by Tilbury Press, Gardiner, Maine, in 1996, on the centennial of its publication, with an afterword by Donald Justice.

The Children of the Night. Boston: Richard G. Badger & Company, 1897.

Captain Craig. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1902.

The Town Down the River. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910.

Van Zorn, A Comedy in Three Acts. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914.

The Porcupine, A Drama in Three Acts. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1915.

The Man Against the Sky. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916.

Merlin. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917.

The Peterborough Idea. Privately Printed, 1917.

Lancelot. New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1920.

The Three Taverns. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920.

[Collected Poems, 1921 edition, awarded Pulitzer Prize.]

Avon’s Harvest. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1921.

Roman Bartholow. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1923.

The Man Who Died Twice. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1924. [awarded Pulitzer Prize.]

Dionysius in Doubt. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1925.

Tristram. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927. [awarded Pulitzer Prize.]

Sonnets 1889–1927. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928.

Cavender’s House. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1929.

Selections From the Letters of Thomas Sergeant Perry, edited with an introduction by Edwin Arlington Robinson. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1929.

The Glory of the Nightingales. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1930.

“The First Seven Years,” The Colophon, December, 1930, pp. 71–78.

Matthias at the Door. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1931.

Nicodemus. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932.

Talifer. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1933.

Amaranth. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1934.

King Jasper. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1935.

Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937.

Richard Cary, Uncollected Poems and Prose of Edwin Arlington Robinson (Waterville, Maine: Colby College Press, 1975)

The Poetry of E. A. Robinson, selected and with an Introduction and Notes by Robert Mezey. New York: The Modern Library, 1999.

Edwin Arlington Robinson Poems, selected and edited by Scott Donaldson N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf/Everyman Library, 2007.

Biography

Donaldson, Scott, Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poet’s Life. N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 2007. Since its publication in February, 2007, this has become the definitive biography of Robinson.

Brown, Rollo Walter. Next Door to a Poet. N.Y. and London: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1937. This is a series of vivid recollections by a writer who shared an adjoining cabin to Robinson at the MacDowell Colony for many years.

Coxe, Louis. Edwin Arlington Robinson: The Life of Poetry. N.Y.: Pegasus, 1969. This is an excellent brief biography and interpretation of Robinson’s work.

Grinstein, Alexander and Adele B. Grinstein, Edwin Arlington Robinson: Child of Scorn. N.Y.: iUniverse, 2007.

Hagedorn, Hermann. Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Biography. N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1938. This was the first major biography of Robinson and touted as the “official biography” by the executors of the poet’s estate. It incurred the disapprobation of the poet’s family even before its publication. The local eccentric Eben Haley led an attempt to ban it from the Gardiner Public Library. Though it is unbalanced and at times prone to error, this first biography laid the foundation for all subsequent Robinson studies. James S. Barstow in a privately printed pamphlet, My Tilbury Town (New York, 1938), vehemently attacked Hagedorn’s characterization of Gardiner and its people.

Neff, Emery. Edwin Arlington Robinson. American Men of Letters Series. N.Y.: William Sloane Associates, 1943. Neff with Coxe represents the most balanced interpretation of Robinson’s life until the publication of Donaldson’s Poet’s Life.

Richards, Laura E. E. A. R. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936. A warm and evocative memoir by Robinson’s devoted friend, written as a memorial immediately after his death. Though brief, it remains authoritative within the bounds stated by the author. This should be read together with the autobiography of Laura E. Richards, Stepping Westwards (New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1931) noting Chapter XI, “A Posey of Friendship,” pages 377–383.

Smith, Chard Powers, Where the Light Falls: A Portrait of Edwin Arlington Robinson. N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1965. A highly controversial publication, but the most popular biography to date. It made a sensation when it revealed the triangular romance of Emma Shepherd with the Robinson brothers. It is marred by omission of certain source material that fortunately will be used and reinterpreted by Donaldson in Poet’s Life.

Critical and Interpretative Studies

Anderson, Wallace L. Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968. This is the best introduction to the poet. It might rightly be called “The Idiot’s Guide to Robinson” or “Robinson for Dummies.” It deserves to be reprinted.

Barnard, Ellsworth. Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Critical Study. N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1952. This is one of the most sensible and balanced studies of Robinson’s creative work.

Cary, Richard, ed., Appreciation of Edwin Arlington Robinson: 28 Interpretative Essays. Waterville, Maine: Colby College Press, 1969. This centennial celebration of Robinson brings together some of the best journal articles about Robinson.

Cary, Richard, The Early Reception of Edwin Arlington Robinson: The First Twenty Years. Waterville, Maine: Colby College Press, 1974. Cary, long-time curator of Special Collections at Colby College, traced all the early reviews of Robinson’s works and determined that the poet was not as neglected in his early career as has popularly been supposed.

Cestre, Charles. An Introduction to Edwin Arlington Robinson. N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1930. This gathering of Cestre’s lectures during his term as a visiting scholar at Bryn Mawr appeared in Robinson’s lifetime, and Robinson said that Cestre was the only scholar who “says a great deal … [about] what I have been trying to do.”

Coffin, Robert P. Tristram. New Poetry of New England: Frost and Robinson. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1938. Two lengthy and florid essays about Frost and Robinson who were often at loggerheads.

Coxe, Louis. Edwin Arlington Robinson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962. This pamphlet is an inspired but brief introduction to Robinson.

Fussell, Edwin S. Edwin Arlington Robinson: The Literary Background of a Traditional Poet. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1954. A fascinating study that assesses what Robinson must have read and how he used the great literature of the ages in his own work. An alternative title would be “How Robinson became Robinson.”

Gale, Robert L. An Edwin Arlington Robinson Encyclopedia. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2006. This reference work now fills the void created when Wallace Anderson's book went out of print. It is now the best general introduction to Robinson's life and work.

Godman, Michael E. Edwin Arlington Robinson. Mankato, Minnesota: Creative Education, 1994. Though this biography is intended for children, adults will delight in this as well.

Kaplan, Estelle. Philosophy in the Poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson. N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1940. Although Robinson said there was no philosophy in his work, Kaplan has found many recurring themes and presented them in this work which is a conversion of her doctoral dissertation.

Lowell, Amy. Tendencies in Modern American Poetry. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company at the Riverside Press, 1917. The critic that Robinson feared the most was Amy Lowell, but he receives considerable praise from her.

Morris, Lloyd. The Poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson: An Essay in Appreciation. N.Y.: George H. Doran Company, 1923. This period piece was obviously an attempt by Robinson’s agents to promote publication of his work.

Murphy, Francis, ed. Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970. This together with Cary’s collection of journal articles is was an important part of the centennial celebration in 1969.

Redman, Ben Ray. Edwin Arlington Robinson. N.Y.: Robert M. McBride & Co., 1926. This is another period piece by commercial promoters of Robinson’s work. Read together with Morris, it is readily apparently that Robinson zealously guarded all biographical facts about himself.

Robinson, W. R. Edwin Arlington Robinson. Cleveland, Ohio: The Press of Western Reserve University, 1967).This is an excellent appraisal of Robinson’s publications.

Van Doren, Mark. Edwin Arlington Robinson. N.Y.: The Literary Guild of America, 1927. This is the third and last commercial attempt to promote Robinson’s publications during his lifetime.

Winters, Yvor. Edwin Arlington Robinson. N.Y.: New Directions, 1971. Though by a devoted follower of Robinson, this critical study at times is harsh. It is frequently quoted in critical studies.

Published Correspondence

Special Note: Wallace Anderson intended to publish, in probably five volumes at the Harvard University Press, the complete correspondence of Robinson. Before Anderson’s untimely death, he transcribed approximately eighty percent of the known letters of Robinson. Fortunately Anderson’s heirs presented his massive archive to the Special Collections Department at Colby College in 2002 where it is available to scholars. Scott Donaldson has mined this collection in preparation for A Poet’s Life.

Cary, Richard ed., Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Letters to Edith Brower. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968. This sets the standard for an editor of Robinson’s correspondence.

Selected Letters of Edwin Arlington Robinson. N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1940. This was the other “official” publication by the executors of Robinson’s estate. It is now know that the texts of several letters were manicured or sanitized

Sutcliffe, Denham. Untriangulated Stars: Letters of Edwin Arlington Robinson to Harry De Forest Smith 1890–1905. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947. This collection contains much history of Gardiner, Maine, in the 1890s. Robinson wrote to his close friend and Gardiner High School classmate while the latter was a student at Bowdoin. Smith later became a distinguished professor at Amherst. Eight letters in the collection were purged from this publication because certain subject matter was considered sensitive in 1947.

Bibliographical Studies

Special Note: The Special Collections Department, Miller Library, Colby College, Waterville, Maine, possesses the largest and most significant collection of the books and manuscripts of Edwin Arlington Robinson. The Berg Collection at the New York Public Library is the second most important collection. The Robinson manuscripts at the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, constitutes the other important collection. There are important Robinson materials in “The Yellow House Papers: The Laura E. Richards Collection” owned by the Gardiner Library Association and available to scholars at the Maine Historical Society in Portland, Maine.

Bates, Esther Willard. Edwin Arlington Robinson and His Manuscripts. Waterville, Maine: Colby College Library, 1944.

Hogan, Charles Beecher. A Bibliography of Edwin Arlington Robinson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1936.

Hogan, Charles Beecher. “Edwin Arlington: New Bibliographical Notes,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 35(Quarter II):115–44.

Humphrey, James, III. The Library of Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Descriptive Catalogue. Waterville, Maine: Colby College Press, 1950.

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

Lippincott, Lillian. A Bibliography of the Writings and Criticisms of Edwin Arlington Robinson. Boston: F. W. Faxton, 1937.

White, William, Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Supplementary Bibliography. Kent State University, 1971.