Robert P. T. Coffin


Robert Peter Tristram Coffin 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.

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 in 1913 and then his Masters of Arts from Princeton University in 1918. In 1922 Coffin was awarded the degree of Doctor of Literature by Trinity College, Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar. 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 Bowdoin College.
Modeled after his friend and fellow poet Robert Frost's Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, 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.

Partial bibliography

Non-fiction

  • Book of Crowns and Cottages
  • Laud, Storm Center of Stuart England
  • The Dukes of Buckingham, Playboys of the Stuart World
  • Portrait of an American
  • Lost Paradise
  • The Kennebec: Cradle of Americans
  • Maine Ballads
  • Captain Abby and Captain John, an Around-the-World Biography.
  • Primer for America
  • Mainstays of Maine
  • Maine Doings

Fiction and poetry

  • Christchurch
  • Dew and Bronze
  • Golden Falcon
  • The Yoke of Thunder
  • Ballads of Square-Toed Americans
  • Strange Holiness
  • Red Sky in the Morning
  • John Dawn
  • Saltwater Farm. J. J. Lankes.
  • Thomas-Thomas-Ancil-Thomas
  • Book of Uncles
  • Poems for a Son with Wings
  • People Behave Like Ballads
  • Yankee Coast
  • One Horse Farm
  • Apples by Ocean
  • On the Green Carpet