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Lost paradise;: A boyhood on a Maine coast farm
A Boyhood on a Maine Coast Farm
284 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1934
About the author
Robert Peter Tristram Coffin
53 books8 followersRobert Peter Tristram Coffin (1892-1955) was born in Brunswick on March 18, 1892 and grew up in Harpswell on Great Island on his father’s salt water farm.
Coffin graduated from Bowdoin College in 1915 at the top of his class, having won several prizes for his excellent writing, including the Hawthorne Prize for short stories twice. Awarded the Henry W. Longfellow fellowship, he spent a year at Princeton then went to Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar. His studies were interrupted by a year in the armed services during World War I.
In 1924 he published his volume of poems, Christchurch, the first of forty books. By 1936 he had won the Pulitzer Prize for Strange Holiness.
Other awards include Honorary Life Member, National Arts Club, 1931; Phi Beta Kappa Poet at Harvard, 1932; Gold Medal, National Honor Poet, 1935; and elected to National Institute of Arts and Letters, 1946.
R. P. T. Coffin lectured at the University of Indiana and at the University of Cincinnati. He was a member of the English Department at Wells College in Aurora, New York.
Coffin returned to Bowdoin to teach (1934-1955), and was honored there on July 9, 1948 when he read from his poems and displayed his drawings.
Additional resources
The Bowdoin College Library’s Special Collections Library holds many of his manuscripts, drafts, proofs, notes, personal records, lectures, plays, poems, books, recordings, and photographs.
“Epilogue.” Colby Quarterly. December, 1965.
Sanborn, Annie Coffin. The Life of Robert Peter Tristram Coffin and Family. Alton, New Hampshire. 1963.
(From http://maineanencyclopedia.com/coffin..., the Maine Encyclopedia)
Coffin graduated from Bowdoin College in 1915 at the top of his class, having won several prizes for his excellent writing, including the Hawthorne Prize for short stories twice. Awarded the Henry W. Longfellow fellowship, he spent a year at Princeton then went to Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar. His studies were interrupted by a year in the armed services during World War I.
In 1924 he published his volume of poems, Christchurch, the first of forty books. By 1936 he had won the Pulitzer Prize for Strange Holiness.
Other awards include Honorary Life Member, National Arts Club, 1931; Phi Beta Kappa Poet at Harvard, 1932; Gold Medal, National Honor Poet, 1935; and elected to National Institute of Arts and Letters, 1946.
R. P. T. Coffin lectured at the University of Indiana and at the University of Cincinnati. He was a member of the English Department at Wells College in Aurora, New York.
Coffin returned to Bowdoin to teach (1934-1955), and was honored there on July 9, 1948 when he read from his poems and displayed his drawings.
Additional resources
The Bowdoin College Library’s Special Collections Library holds many of his manuscripts, drafts, proofs, notes, personal records, lectures, plays, poems, books, recordings, and photographs.
“Epilogue.” Colby Quarterly. December, 1965.
Sanborn, Annie Coffin. The Life of Robert Peter Tristram Coffin and Family. Alton, New Hampshire. 1963.
(From http://maineanencyclopedia.com/coffin..., the Maine Encyclopedia)
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 10, 2015
Published in 1934, Lost Paradise is the memoir by a 42 year old native son of the State of Maine, where he spent his childhood on the coast and islands of that state. The Coffin family itself was one of the founding families of that region of Maine, and continued to play prominent roles well into the late 20th century. The author himself went on to become president of Bowdoin College, a prestigious private liberal arts college in Maine that educated any number of America's leaders.
Book reviews from the date of publication tag Lost Paradise: A Boyhood on a Maine Coast Farm as a "nostalgic" look back at a well-remembered childhood. I, on the other hand, think both the memoir and the book reviews reflect a casual acceptance of social and cultural behaviors that were the norm, but eighty years later reflect certain prejudices that are unacceptable. Racism, patriarchy that squelched feminist equality, and animal cruelty are written about so casually that this reader believes this memoir uncritically reflects an accepted way of life.
That being said, I've given the book four stars in part because it perhaps unintentionally reflects an era so well, both the ugliness and the beauty. It also stands as fine regional literature, in that it tells the story of growing up on an island off the coast of Maine when children attended one room District Schools, worked like dogs on the family farm or out on the sea in lobstering or fishing boats alongside their fathers or uncles, and when women worked in the home, bred children--preferably sons--one after another and often died as a result of childbirth.
The book is told from young Peter's perspective, a boy who loved the sea, the islands, and his childhood on an island farm. The descriptive writing about the land and seascape is lyrical--he obviously loved that world immensely and admired the moral principles inculcated, principles that had as their bedrock a willingness to work hard in order to get ahead. (The American Dream!)
My grandparents were born about the same time as Mr. Coffin, and some of the descriptions of farm life stir vivid memories of my childhood when I visited my grandparents. That is another reason for the four star rating. However, I was frequently put off by the casual acts of what I consider animal cruelty, but served to remind me where our bad attitudes toward animals and stewardship of this earth come from. It wasn't so long ago that eight year old boys learned to hunt and thought nothing of coming home with a string of dead yellow-legged plovers they'd blasted out of the sky while haying.
Book reviews from the date of publication tag Lost Paradise: A Boyhood on a Maine Coast Farm as a "nostalgic" look back at a well-remembered childhood. I, on the other hand, think both the memoir and the book reviews reflect a casual acceptance of social and cultural behaviors that were the norm, but eighty years later reflect certain prejudices that are unacceptable. Racism, patriarchy that squelched feminist equality, and animal cruelty are written about so casually that this reader believes this memoir uncritically reflects an accepted way of life.
That being said, I've given the book four stars in part because it perhaps unintentionally reflects an era so well, both the ugliness and the beauty. It also stands as fine regional literature, in that it tells the story of growing up on an island off the coast of Maine when children attended one room District Schools, worked like dogs on the family farm or out on the sea in lobstering or fishing boats alongside their fathers or uncles, and when women worked in the home, bred children--preferably sons--one after another and often died as a result of childbirth.
The book is told from young Peter's perspective, a boy who loved the sea, the islands, and his childhood on an island farm. The descriptive writing about the land and seascape is lyrical--he obviously loved that world immensely and admired the moral principles inculcated, principles that had as their bedrock a willingness to work hard in order to get ahead. (The American Dream!)
My grandparents were born about the same time as Mr. Coffin, and some of the descriptions of farm life stir vivid memories of my childhood when I visited my grandparents. That is another reason for the four star rating. However, I was frequently put off by the casual acts of what I consider animal cruelty, but served to remind me where our bad attitudes toward animals and stewardship of this earth come from. It wasn't so long ago that eight year old boys learned to hunt and thought nothing of coming home with a string of dead yellow-legged plovers they'd blasted out of the sky while haying.
Displaying 1 of 1 review