He came from a wealthy family and expected a life of ease, but his father died, his family lost its fortune in the depression of the 1870s, and his mother was struck down by an illness so contagious that no undertaker would touch her body. The brothers had to dress her, make a coffin for her, and bury her themselves. One brother became an alcoholic, another a morphine addict, and Edward lived on the brink of starvation, writing poetry that never attracted any notice.
Somehow, though, Kermit Roosevelt came to read Robinson's poems, and gave them to his father, Theodore Roosevelt, who arranged a job for the poet in the Customs House. Roosevelt told him, "I expect you to think poetry first and customs second." All he had to do was show up at his desk, read the morning newspaper, and leave it on his chair to prove he had been in. This sustained him until he started to write poetry that won some praise. Finally, in his fifties, he won the Pulitzer Prize the first year it was awarded. By the time he died, he was one of the best-known poets in the country.
