Edward Arlington Robinson

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Edward Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) was an American poet, perhaps best remembered for his poem "Richard Cory," which was later turned into a popular song by the folk duo Simon and Garfunkel in the 1960s. However, Robinson's career was far more than a single poem, and he won a total of three Pulitzer Prizes during his life.

Facts about Edward Arlington Robinson

• Edward Arlington Robinson was born in Maine, into a childhood that he later described as particularly unhappy.
• Edward's parents did not bother to name him for six months, with strangers picking one out of a hat. Robinson so hated his name that he preferred to use his initials.
• He later studied at Harvard University, but only for two years.
• By 1896 he was living in New York City, struggling to sustain himself as a poet.
• In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt, impressed by Robinson's poetry, offered him the job at the New York Customs House.

After this job, Edward Arlington Robinson's career took off. During the 1920s he won three Pulitzers. Although he never married, he maintained a long-term relationship with the artist Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones, especially when the two were regular summer residents at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, an artist colony located in Peterborough. Other famous artists to stay at MacDowell include Aaron Copeland, who worked on Appalachian Spring there, and the novelist Spalding Gray.