Jeffers’ life: Robinson Jeffers was born in 1887 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The son of a seminarian, he began classical studies early & spent several childhood years in Europe. After his family moved to California, Jeffers graduated from Occidental College at 18, went to graduate school in literature at USC, studied history & poetry in Switzerland, and also studied medicine at USC & forestry in Washington. After marrying Una Call Kuster in 1913, he settled in Carmel, where he lived until his death in 1962.
Jeffers’ poems: Jeffers brought all his learning in literature, religion, philosophy, languages, myth, and the sciences into his poems. He is best known for long-lined narrative works celebrating the sublime power & beauty of his chosen region, the northern California coast, & for his adaptations of classical themes delineating relations between modern human civilization (which he considered insanely self-centered) & the natural world. Jeffers was an anti-modernist in style & a pioneer ecologist in spirit.
Jeffers & Tor House: On a windy headland looking across Carmel Bay to Point Lobos, Jeffers built a low stone cottage for his family, Tor House, and a 40-foot granite retreat, Hawk Tower, by his own hand & using local stone. He made the place an expression of his naturalist, anti-modernist philosophy & wrote most of his best-loved work there. During his lifetime he & Una received many famous literary visitors at Tor House, and it is now a historical monument offering tours of the cottage, tower & gardens to visitors.
Books by Robinson Jeffers:
- The Wild God of the World: An Anthology of Robinson Jeffers (ed. Albert Gelpi, Stanford University Press, 2003)
- Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers (ed. Tim Hunt, Stanford University Press, 2001)
- Cawdor and Medea, a long poem after Euripides (introduction by William Everson, New Directions, 1970)
- The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: 1920-1928, Vol. 1 (ed. Tim Hunt, Stanford University Press, 1988)
- The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: 1928-1938, Vol. 2
(ed. Tim Hunt, Stanford University Press, 1989)
- The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: 1939-1962, Vol. 3 (ed. Tim Hunt, Stanford University Press, 1998)
- The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: Poetry 1903-1920, Prose, and Unpublished Writings, Vol. 4 (ed. Tim Hunt, Stanford University Press, 2000)
- The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: Textual Evidence and Commentary, Vol. 5 (ed. Tim Hunt, Stanford University Press, 2000)
