About the Collection
Special Collections has one of the most comprehensive collections of Robinson's works in the country.
Our holdings include approximately 450 volumes, many signed, including his published poetry and letters, 20 manuscripts in Robinson's hand, portraits, books that were once a part of Robinson's personal library, and many books and periodicals that contained the first appearances of his poetry. There are also many books and poems by other authors that are dedicated to Robinson, as well as selected books and early critical works about him.
Protrait of Edwin Arlington Robinson by Lilla Cabot Perry
The Edwin Arlington Robinson Collection was a gift to the Oberlin College Libraries made in 1953 by the Reverend Orville Bruce Swift, Oberlin College class of 1911.
Rev. Swift also contributed an album of photographs containing pictures mostly from Gardiner, Maine, where Robinson grew up, and of the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Swift kept a scrapbook containing articles about Robinson, as well as some of his own correspondence relating to Robinson.
Swift served as a Unitarian Universalist minister in Niagara Falls, NY and later Buffalo, NY. He was a native of Wisconsin, and died in 1970 in Beloit, WI.