Robinson Jeffers: A Bibliography of Criticism, 1912–1949

by Robert Brophy (slightly abridged)

Introduction

1912
1920
1930
1940

This compilation selects from and builds on Alex Vardamis’s The Critical Reputation of Robinson Jeffers (1972) with added help from Jeanetta Boswell’s Robinson Jeffers and the Critics (1986), James Karman’s Critical Essays on Robinson Jeffers (1990), S. S. Alberts’s Bibliography (1933), the Index to the Robinson Jefiers Newsletter (1996), various other bibliographic works, and personal research by Robert Brophy, the original compiler. Jeffers’s comments on critical matters and on his own work are also included.

The listing does not intend to be exhaustive. For instance, many entries that Vardamis judges “slight,” “trivial,” and the like are passed over. A number of articles and book chapters from other, diverse sources were excluded for the same reasons and, of course, some potential entries must be presumed simply to have been missed. Reviews are entered when they bear critical weight, carry useful information, or reveal something concerning the critic or the publication. In essence, this gathering presents a series of annual bibliographies, 1912—1949, recording significant material published each year, starting with the arrival of Jeffers’s first book. Reprints are included, usually noted as such. Thus the number of items in no way adds up to an exact count of critical materials retrievable from those thirty—eight years. It seemed useful to attach short summaries, many of them condensations of the abstracts provided by Vardamis, Boswell, others, and the compiler’s own research. These brief annotations, usually one or two lines, are certainly inadequate and could even be misleading; they are no more than indications of article or book content. Since other bibliographies have been used as sources, serious researchers are reminded that citations should be verified from original sources lest inaccuracies be perpetuated.

The listing begins with 1912, the year of Jeffers’s first book publication, with a review of Flagons and Apples. Ostensibly by Los Angeles Times staff reviewer William Huntington Wright, the review is by Jeffers himself, submitted under his friend’s byline. For the full text see Robinson Jeflers Newsletter 47: 8—10 or James Karman’s Critical Essays on Robinson Jeffers (1990), 35.

Abbreviations: BA = Be Angry at the Sun and Other Poems; CA = Californians; C&OP = Cawdor and Other Poems; DA = The Double Axe and Other Poems; D—D = Descent to the Dead; DJ = Dear Judas and Other Poems; GYH = Give Your Heart to the Hawks and Other Poems; M = Medea; RST = Roan Stallion, Tamar, and Other Poems; Sol = Solstice and Other Poems; SC = Such Counsels You Gave to Me and Other Poems; SP = Selected Poetry (1938); T = Tamar and Other Poems; TL=Thurso’s Landing and Other Poems; WPS = The Women at Point Sur; SM = Bennett’s Stone Mason of Tor House (1966); SL = Ridgeway’s Selected Letters (1968).

 

1912 1920 1930 1940

Note: The 1912-1949 bibliography was originally published as Vol. 4, #1&2 of Jeffers Studies.