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Robert Peter Tristram Coffin (March 18, 1892 – January 20, 1955) was an American poet, educator, writer, editor and literary critic. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1936, he was the Poetry editor for Yankee magazine.[1]

Robert Peter Tristram Coffin
Born	March 18, 1892 Brunswick, Maine
Died	January 20, 1955(1955-01-20) (aged 62) Brunswick, Maine
Occupation	Poet
Nationality	American

Early life

Born Robert Peter Coffin, the youngest of ten children to James William Coffin, a descendant of Tristram Coffin (settler) and Alice Mary Coombs on a saltwater farm on Sebascodegan Island he earned his undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College in 1913 and then his Masters of Arts from Princeton University in 1918.[1] In 1922 Coffin was awarded the degree of Doctor of Literature by Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1936.[2]

Career

Coffin served with the US Army in World War I. When he returned he taught English at Wells Preschool and then as the Pierce Professor at Bowdoin College.[1]

Modeled after his friend and fellow poet Robert Frost's Bread Loaf Writers' Conference he was the co-founder with Carroll Towle of the Writers' Conference of the University of New Hampshire in 1956.[3][1]

Coffin also illustrated many of his books.

Coffin died of a heart attack in Brunswick, Maine, on January 20, 1955, at the age of 62. He is buried in the Cranberry Horn Cemetery in Harpswell.

Partial bibliography

Non-fiction

• Book of Crowns and Cottages (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1925)
• Laud, Storm Center of Stuart England (1930)
• The Dukes of Buckingham, Playboys of the Stuart World (1931)
• Portrait of an American (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1931)
• Lost Paradise (Autobiography) (The Macmillan Co. New York, 1934)
• The Kennebec: Cradle of Americans (Farrar & Rinehart, 1937) (First volume in the Rivers of America Series)
• Maine Ballads (The Macmillan Co., New York 1938)
• Captain Abby and Captain John, an Around-the-World Biography (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1939).
• Primer for America (1943)
• Mainstays of Maine (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1944)
• Maine Doings (Bobbs-Merrill, New York, 1950)

Fiction and poetry

• Christchurch (Thomas Seltzer, New York, 1924)
• Dew and Bronze (Albert & Charles Boni, 1927)
• Golden Falcon (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1929)
• The Yoke of Thunder (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1932)
• Ballads of Square-Toed Americans (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1933)
• Strange Holiness (1935)
• Red Sky in the Morning (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1935)
• John Dawn (1936)
• Saltwater Farm. J. J. Lankes (illustration). (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1937.)
• Thomas-Thomas-Ancil-Thomas (1941)
• Book of Uncles (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1942)
• Poems for a Son with Wings (1945)
• People Behave Like Ballads (1946)
• Yankee Coast (1947)
• One Horse Farm (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1949)
• Apples by Ocean (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1950)
• On the Green Carpet (1951)

References

Sources

• Annie Coffin Sanborn (1963). The life of Robert Peter Tristram Coffin and family. University of Michigan.

External links

• Works by Robert P. Tristram Coffin at Faded Page (Canada)
• Coffin collection, George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives, Bowdoin College
• Audio introduction to Coffin's life and work by Coffin scholar Kevin Belmonte

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