Background

Henry Morton Robinson was born in Boston, Massachussets, the eldest of eleven children of Henry Morton Robinson and Ellen Flynn. His father, a businessman, later moved the family to Malden, a Boston suburb.

Education

Robinson graduated from high school in Malden, a Boston suburb, in 1917.

In 1919, he entered Columbia University, where he took part in the dramatic and literary life and became known as Rondo because, as editor of the campus literary magazine, Varsity, he demonstrated a fondness for the French verse form the rondeau.

At graduation in 1923, he was awarded the Moncrieff Proudfit fellowship in letters, which enabled him to take a Master of Arts in 1924.

Career

After graduating high school, Robinson served the next twenty-two months on subchasers and as a rifle instructor, acquiring an "unextinguishable enthusiasm for boats and small arms. "

In his senior year at Columbia University Robinson wrote his first book, Children of Morningside (1924), a verse novel.

Robinson taught at Columbia for the next three years after taking a Master of Arts degree in 1924 and, during that time, wrote his second book, John Erskine: A Modern Acteon (1928).

While teaching at Columbia, Robinson edited Contemporary Verse (1925 - 1927) and contributed to three literary journals, Century, Bookman, and North American Review. Until 1935, Robinson "barely supported" himself and his growing family by selling stories, articles, and poems to national magazines.

Buck Fever (1929), a collection of verse, including two long narrative poems, won Conrad Aiken's praise.

Stout Cortez, a Biography of the Spanish Conquest (1931) received mixed reviews. Also in 1931 he was selected as Columbia's Phi Beta Kappa poet.

From 1935 to 1945, Robinson held three editorial positions with the Reader's Digest. He published the nonfiction Science Versus Crime (1935); a verse volume, Second Wisdom (1937); and a defense of the free-enterprise system, Private Virtue, Public Good (1938). He was particularly proud of the nonfiction Fantastic Interim (1943), an "outspoken" account of American "manners, morals and business during the 206 and 306. "

A five-year collaboration with mythologist Joseph Campbell, then a professor at Sarah Lawrence College, led to A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (1944).

Although still valuable, this full-length commentary on James Joyce's longest and most difficult work has been superseded to some extent by later scholarship.

Robinson's novels include The Perfect Round (1945), The Great Snow (1947), The Cardinal (1950), and Water of Life (1960). The Cardinal, based in part on the life and career of Boston's William Cardinal O'Connell, took Robinson to the heights of popular and critical success, although some Catholic critics viewed it dimly. It sold 1. 5 million copies and was translated into a dozen languages.

His last book of verse, The Enchanted Grindstone and Other Poems (1952), is an account in poetry of his childhood.

He died in New York City of complications resulting from an accidental scalding at the Columbia University Club.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake: Unlocking James Joyce's Masterwork (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)

    ( Countless would-be readers of Finnegans Wake — James Jo...)

  • The Cardinal

    ( A selection of the Literary Guild, it was published in ...)

  • Stout Cortez;: A biography of the Spanish Conquest,

    (Hardcover; Good; No Dust Jacket; Ex-library with the stan...)

  • Buck Fever

    (Narrative and lyrical, some collected from previous magaz...)

  • Water of Life

    (Impact of whiskey-making on three generations of an India...)

  • Private Virtue, Public Good

    (Good red hard back; gilt lettering on front; deckel page ...)

  • Children of Morningside

    (NY 1924 first edition Otto v. St. Whitelock. Epic poem wh...)

  • The Perfect Round

    (NY 1945 1st (stated). 8vo., 280pp., cloth. VG in VG DJ.)

  • John Erskine: A Modern Actaeon

    (Together With Mr. Erskine's Radio Speech Of September 18,...)

  • The Enchanted Grindstone and Other Poems

    (NY 1952 1st. 107pp. Inscribed and signed by the author in...)

  • The Great Snow
  • Second Wisdom
  • Science versus crime,
  • Science catches the criminal,
  • Fantastic Interim : A Hindsight History of American Manners, Morals, and Mistakes between Versailles and Pearl Harbor.

Views

Quotations: Robinson said it was his "good fortune to be first a student and later a colleague of John Erskine during those exciting years when he was launching the Great Books program. "

Recalling his college years, he later wrote: "If I were to have a college of my own, / The only subjects in the catalog would be athletics and poetry / For they are the only things that matter, / And as Socrates pointed out in his ideal prospectus, / They include everything else anyway. "

Membership

At Columbia University Robinson joined Boar's Head, Erskine's undergraduate poetry society, and became president of Philolexian, a debating society.

Personality

He was a trustee of the Woodstock Public Library and avidly pursued the sports of sailing and falconry.

Although Robinson was, as one critic said, "a natural born poet, " he is remembered for the versatility he displayed as a teacher, editor, critic, essayist, scholar, historian, biographer, novelist, and journalist. In all of these endeavors his work, though small in quantity, was excellent in quality.

Connections

On Octcober 18, 1926, Robinson married Gertrude Ludwig; they had three children.

Robinson's later years were spent in Woodstock, New York, with his second wife, Vivian Wyndham, whom he had married on July 11, 1953.

(He and his first wife had been divorced. )

Father:

Henry Morton Robinson

Mother:

Ellen Flynn

Wife:

Gertrude Ludwig

Wife:

Vivian Wyndham

colleague:

Joseph Campbell

colleague:

John Erskine