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Richard Cory Edwin Robinson spent his youth hood in a small town in Maine, a town that provided him the inspiration for many of his poems. His dad was a successful merchant; his mom a schoolteacher. His parents were biased to the two older sons and tended to turn a blind eye to Edwin. While devoted to his family, Edwin often felt like the black sheep of the family. He also felt rejected from the society of his town. Edwin Robinson studied at Harvard from 1891 to 1893 and soon returned to Maine to stay for three years. Unsatisfied, bitter and isolated most of the time, he moved to New York in 1895. His first volume of poems was published while he was at home in Maine; and then in 1897 a second volume. He prospered neither as a poet nor as a businessman. Edwin Robinson's best-known statement on the hollowness of conventional success is the lyric poem, "Richard Cory". Although everyone respects and admires Cory, one night he surprises his townsfolk by putting a bullet through his head.
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