Robinson, who was influenced by Thomas Hardy's romanticism and the naturalism of Emile Zola, refused to freelance, teach, or otherwise lower his literary standards. While living in Staten Island, New York, he completed two plays, Van Zorn (1914) and The Porcupine (1915). He lived off an inheritance and trust fund while earning three Pulitzer Prizes for poetry for Collected Poems (1922), The Man Who Died Twice (1925), and a trilogy, Lancelot (1920), Tristram (1927), and Modred (1929), a popular verse narrative that restates romantic situations from Arthurian lore. In addition, Robinson received acclaim for The Town Down the River (1910), which he dedicated to Roosevelt, The Man Against the Sky (1916), The Three Taverns (1920), source of "Mr. Flood's Party," and the biography of a hate-driven man, Avon's Harvest (1921), which the poet once characterized as a "dime novel in verse." In all, he published twenty-eight works.
After his death from stomach cancer at a New York Hospital on April 6, 1935, Robinson was cremated, his ashes interred in Gardiner, and a plaque erected on Church Square commemorating his writings about Tilbury Town. Posthumous works include King Jasper (1935), an allegory of the Industrial Age he proofread only hours before his death; an anthology, Collected Poems, issued in 1937; and Selected Letters (1940), a glimpse into his private, self-concealing correspondence. His papers are housed at the University of New Hampshire.
