Edwin Arlington Robinson (December 22, 1869 – April 6, 1935) was an American poet and playwright. Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on three occasions and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.
Early life
Robinson was born in Head Tide, Maine, on December 22, 1869. His parents were Edward and Mary (née Palmer). They had wanted a girl, and did not name him until he was six months old, when they visited a holiday resort—at which point other vacationers decided that he should have a name, and selected the name "Edwin" from a hat containing a random set of boy's names. The man who drew the name was from Arlington, Massachusetts, so "Arlington" was used for his middle name. Throughout his life, he hated not only his given name but also his family's habit of calling him "Win". As an adult, he always used the signature "E. A."
Robinson's family moved to Gardiner, Maine, in 1870. He later described his childhood as "stark and unhappy". Robinson first studied at Mrs. Morrell's School in Gardiner and later attended public schools, graduating from Gardiner High School.
Robinson's early struggles led many of his poems to have a dark pessimism and his stories to deal with "an American dream gone awry." His eldest brother, Dean, was a doctor and had become addicted to laudanum while self-medicating for neuralgia. The middle brother, Herman, a handsome and charismatic man, married the woman Edwin loved, Emma Löehen Shepherd. Emma thought highly of Edwin and encouraged his poetry, but he was deemed too young to be in realistic competition for her hand, which didn't keep him from being agitated deeply by witnessing what he considered her being deceived by Herman's charm and choosing shallowness over depth. The marriage was a great blow to Edwin's pride, and during the wedding ceremony, on February 12, 1890, the despondent poet stayed home and wrote a poem of protest, "Cortège", the title of which refers to the train that took the newly married couple out of town to their new life in St. Louis, Missouri. Herman suffered multiple business failures, becoming an alcoholic, and ended up estranged from his wife and children. Herman died impoverished in 1909 of tuberculosis at Boston City Hospital. Robinson's poem Richard Cory was thought by his sister-in-law Emma to refer to her husband.
