author
Robert Hillyer
1895–1961
A Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet and longtime Harvard teacher, he wrote in traditional forms with a formal grace that stood apart from many of his modernist contemporaries. His work blends lyric polish with a strong, sometimes combative literary voice.
1 Audiobook
The Five Books of Youth
by Robert Hillyer
About the author
Born in East Orange, New Jersey, in 1895, Robert Silliman Hillyer became known as an American poet, novelist, and professor of English literature. He studied at Harvard and went on to teach there for many years, building a career that joined academic life with a steady output of verse.
Hillyer published several books of poetry, including Collected Verse, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1934. Sources on his work describe him as a defender of traditional poetic forms, and that preference shaped both his own writing and his literary criticism.
He died in 1961 in Wilmington, Delaware. Though he is less widely read today than some of his contemporaries, he remains a notable figure in 20th-century American poetry for his craftsmanship, his teaching, and his clear commitment to formal verse.