Robinson grew up in a literary environment: her parent’s house in London was a salon for the preeminent artists and writers of the day, including William Michael Rossetti, William Morris, William Holman Hunt, Edward Burne-Jones, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arthur Symons, Ford Maddox Brown, and Mathilde Blind.
She was educated in Brussels and at University College, London.
She was a poet, novelist, essayist, literary critic, and translator. She was the elder sister of the novelist and critic Frances Mabel Robinson. Her first marriage in 1888 was to James Darmesteter.
She wrote nearly 30 books
Her Collected Poems appeared in 1901. Arden: A Novel was published in 1888, Louisiana Vie de Emile Duclaux in 1907.
Images & Meditations, a book of poems was first published in 1923 by T. Fisher Unwin Limited., London. Robinson wrote also wrote the first full-length biography of Emily Brontë to positive reviews.
Robinson also had a close relationship with Vernon Lee (the pen name of Violet Paget).
The two of them spent the better part of eight years together, in both London and Italy. As Emily Harrington has explained, “critics disagree about their relationship, debating whether it might be classified as a platonic friendship, a romantic friendship, or a lesbian partnership”. Lee herself explained in a letter that she would ask Robinson to marry her if she were a manitoba
