Works By Robinson Jeffers: A Chronological Listing
Flagons and Apples. Los Angeles: Grafton, 1912. A slim booklet of early love lyrics, imitative of the English Romantic poets. Reprinted by Cayucos Books, 1970.
Californians. New York: Macmillan, 1916. Lyrics and narratives, still imitative, reflecting the Big Sur country and anticipating later themes. Narratives use Big Sur and the central California coast. Reprinted by Cayucos Books, 1971.
Tamar and Other Poems. New York: Peter Boyle, 1924. Dramatically different poetry: accentual verse, long line, themes of incest, biblical and mythical allusion, apocalyptic.
Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1925. The Tamar volume expanded with a new narrative and a drama, The Tower Beyond Tragedy. First major publication of his mature work. (Republished in 1935 by Random House as part of the Modern Library, 1935, with an Introduction by Jeffers and previously uncollected poems from A Miscellany of American Poetry, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1927.)
The Women at Point Sur. New York: Liveright, 1927. One hundred seventy-five page narrative about a renegade minister grotesquely seeking God. Sexual themes and violence. Though Jeffers conceived it as his high achievement, it repelled many critics. (Reissued in 1977 with a textual note, five poems originally intended for the 1927 volume, and Afterword by Tim Hunt.)
Cawdor and Other Poems. New York: Liveright, 1928. Adaptation of the Hippolytus-Phaedra theme to the Big Sur coast. Reprinted with Medea in 1970.
Dear Judas and Other Poems. New York: Liveright, 1929. Jesus’s passion story as a Noh play. This volume also includes The Loving Shepherdess, a long narrative about a doomed female Christ figure on the Big Sur Coast. (Reissued in 1977 with an Afterword and textual note by Robert Brophy.)
Descent to the Dead: Poems Written in Ireland and Great Britain. New York: Random House, 1931. Poems occasioned by the 1929 Jeffers family stay on the Northeast Irish coast and travel through Ireland, Scotland, and England. Later included in Give Your Heart to the Hawks (1933) and Selected Poetry (1938).
Thurso’s Landing and Other Poems. New York: Liveright, 1932. Tragic hubris and heroic triumph-through-pain on a coastal ranch. Also issued in combination with Dear Judas, Random House, c. 1936.
Give Your Heart to the Hawks and Other Poems. New York: Random House, 1933. A Cain and Abel story urging Jeffersian transvaluation of values.
Solstice and Other Poems. New York: Random House, 1935. An adaptation of the Greek Medea myth to the California coast. Also includes At the Birth of an Age, a retelling of the Volsung Saga.
Such Counsels You Gave to Me and Other Poems. New York: Random House, 1937. Scottish ballad motif as vehicle for an Oedipal conflict.
The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers. New York: Random House, 1938. Comprehensive collection. Important introduction by Jeffers.
Be Angry at the Sun and Other Poems. New York: Random House, 1941. Strong response to World War II.
Medea. New York: Random House, 1946. Adapted from Euripides. Triumphant New York theater production in 1947 with Judith Anderson. Reprinted with Cawdor in 1970.
The Double Axe and Other Poems. New York: Random House, 1948. Turbulent political poems against World War II and all wars. Includes famous publisher’s note of political dissociation by Random House. Received with almost universally hostile criticism. (Republished by Liveright in 1977 with a Foreword by William Everson and an Afterword by Bill Hotchkiss. This edition added ten poems that Jeffers had dropped from the collection and one that he had, it seems, meant to leave unpublished.)
Poetry, Gongorism and a Thousand Years. Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie, 1949. New York Times article from 1948, defining the “great poet” as one who avoids trends and writes to be understood in the far future.
Hungerfield and Other Poems. New York: Random House, 1954. Powerful tale with autobiographical lyric frame reconciling Jeffers with his wife’s death.
Visits to Ireland. Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie, 1954. Excerpts from Una Jeffers’s travel diaries edited by Jeffers and containing entries by him.
Themes in My Poems. San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1956. Text of Jeffers’s 1941 lecture at the Library of Congress. Themes of death, war, culture cycles, pantheism, the self-torturing god, hawks, and poetry as discovery.
The Beginning and the End and Other Poems. New York: Random House, 1963. Posthumous collection edited by Melba Berry Bennett. Final statements on mankind in the shadow of nuclear war. Title poem recapitulates evolution.
Robinson Jeffers: Selected Poems. New York: Vintage, l965. Slim paperback, mostly lyrics, from his long career.
Cawdor / Medea. New York: New Directions, 1970. Introduction and notes by William Everson. Reprint of narrative and drama from the 1928 and 1946 volumes.
Jeffers Country: The Seed Plots of Robinson Jeffers’ Poetry. San Francisco: Scrimshaw Press, 1971. Poetry of Jeffers alongside photographs by Horace Lyon. Original prefaces by Robinson and Una Jeffers.
The Alpine Christ and Other Poems. N.p.: Cayucos Books, 1974. Edited with preface, introduction, and afterword by William Everson. Early lyrics mostly unpublished, with a fragment from an unpublished drama of World War I.
Brides of the South Wind: Poems 1917-1922. N.p.: Cayucos Books, 1974. Edited with preface, introduction, and afterword by William Everson. Early published and unpublished poems.
What Odd Expedients and Other Poems. Hamden, CT: Shoestring, 1981. Ed. Robert Ian Scott. Twenty-five mostly unpublished poems written about World War II, compiled from manuscripts at the Humanities Research Center, University of Texas.
Rock and Hawk: A Selection of Shorter Poems by Robinson Jeffers. Ed. Robert Hass. New York: Random House, 1987. Important introduction. One hundred sixty-one poems, six of which are short narratives or narrative excerpts. Includes Roan Stallion.
Robinson Jeffers: Selected Poems. The Centenary Edition. Ed. Colin Falck. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1987. Appreciative introduction: “Robinson Jeffers: American Romantic.” Sixty lyrics, three short narratives, excerpt from Medea.
Where Shall I Take You To: The Love Letters of Una and Robinson Jeffers. Ed. Robert Kafka. Foreword by Garth Jeffers. Covelo, CA: Yolla Bolly Press, l987. Fifty-seven letters 1910-1913. From papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin.
Songs and Heroes. Los Angeles: Arundel, 1988. Ed. Robert Brophy. Thirty-three early unpublished poems, written about the time of Flagons and Apples.
The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers. Ed. Tim Hunt. Stanford: Stanford University Press, Vol.1, 1988; Vol. 2, 1989; Vol. 3, 1991; Vol. 4, 2000; Vol. 5,2001.
The Collected Letters of Robinson Jeffers, with Selected Letters of Una Jeffers. Ed. James Karman. Stanford: Stanford University Press, Vol.1, 2009; Vol.2, 2011; Vol. 3, 2015.
Major collections of Jeffers manuscripts and related materials can be found at the Mary Norton Clapp Library, Occidental College; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin; and other institutions.
Useful References:
An Index to Robinson Jeffers’s Published Poems, Their First Appearances, and a Directory to Their Manuscripts, Robert Brophy, Robinson Jeffers Newsletter, June 1988, Supplement to Number 73. 20 pages. Available to download on the Robinson Jeffers Newsletter archive page.