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 The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually for Letters, Drama, and Music. The award came five years after the first Pulitzers were awarded in other categories; Joseph Pulitzer's will had not ment ...

in 1936, he was the poetry editor for ''

Yankee The term ''Yankee'' and its contracted form ''Yank'' have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States. Their various meanings depend on the context, and may refer to New Englanders, the Northeastern United Stat ...

'' magazine.

Early life

Born Robert Peter Coffin, the youngest of ten children to James William Coffin, a descendant of Tristram Coffin and Alice Mary Coombs on a saltwater farm on Sebascodegan Island he earned his undergraduate degree from

Bowdoin College Bowdoin College ( ) is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine. It was chartered in 1794. The main Bowdoin campus is located near Casco Bay and the Androscoggin River. In a ...

in 1913 and then his Masters of Arts from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1918. In 1922 Coffin was awarded the degree of Doctor of Literature by

Trinity College, Oxford Trinity College (full name: The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the University of Oxford, of the foundation of Sir Thomas Pope (Knight)) is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in E ...

where he was a

Rhodes Scholar The Rhodes Scholarship is an international Postgraduate education, postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom. The scholarship is open to people from all backgrounds around the world. Esta ...

. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1936.

Career

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

. Modeled after his friend and fellow poet

Robert Frost Robert Lee Frost (March26, 1874January29, 1963) was an American poet. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American Colloquialism, colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New E ...

Bread Loaf Writers' Conference The Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers' Conference is an author's conference held every summer at the Bread Loaf Inn, near Bread Loaf Mountain, east of Middlebury, Vermont. Founded in 1926, it has been called by ''The New Yorker'' "the oldest and most ...

, Coffin was the co-founder with Carroll Towle of the Writers' Conference of the University of New Hampshire in 1956. Coffin also illustrated many of his books. Coffin died of a heart attack in Harpswell, Maine, on January 20, 1955, at the age of 62. He is buried in the Cranberry Horn Cemetery in Harpswell.

Speculated Inspiration for Jay Gatsby

In June 2025, Clare Hopkins, archivist at Trinity College, and Roger Michel, a fellow of the College, announced after searching historical records that Coffin was “almost certainly the model for young Gatsby” in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel

The Great Gatsby ''The Great Gatsby'' () is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with Jay Gatsby, a mysterious mi ...

.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/01/real-jay-gatsby-pulitzer-prize-winning-oxford-graduate/

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

External links

*
Coffin collection, George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives, Bowdoin College
{{DEFAULTSORT:Coffin, Robert American male poets American Rhodes Scholars Poets from Maine Writers from Brunswick, Maine Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winners Bowdoin College alumni 1892 births 1955 deaths Wells College faculty Bowdoin College faculty 20th-century American poets 20th-century American male writers United States Army personnel of World War I Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters