Robinson Jeffers collection

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) was born John Robinson Jeffers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of the Reverend Dr. William Hamilton Jeffers and Annie Robinson Tuttle. He was educated by his father and at European boarding schools. In 1902, Jeffers entered the University of Western Pennsylvania (now the University of Pittsburgh), but was graduated from Occidental College, California, three years later. He pursued graduate studies in literature and philosophy at the Universities of Southern California and Zurich, before enrolling in the Medical School at the University of Southern California in September 1907. In 1910 he left medical school to study forestry for one year at the University of Washington.

While studying at the University of Southern California, Jeffers met Una Call Kuster, the wife of a prominent Los Angeles attorney. Their involvement and Kuster’s ensuing divorce was a public scandal that was widely reported. Jeffers and Kuster were married in 1913 and one year later settled in Carmel, California where Jeffers eventually built the stone cottage and tower he called “Tor House.” A daughter was born in 1914 but died in infancy; twin sons were born in 1916. In 1912 Jeffers privately published his first volume of poetry, Flagons and Apples. In 1916 his second volume, Californians, was commercially published. Tamar and Other Poems (1924), his third volume, proved both a formal and critical breakthrough and was reissued in an expanded edition the following year under the title Roan Stallion, Tamar and other Poems. Over a period encompassing five decades, Jeffers published nearly two-dozen volumes of poetry. In 1954 he published his last volume, Hungerfield and Other Poems, an expanded edition of his Hungerfield (1952) which included a eulogy for Una Jeffers who died in 1950. A volume of Jeffers’ uncollected poems, The Beginning and the End and Other Poems, was published posthumously in 1963.