Henry Morton Robinson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Henry Morton Robinson (born in Boston on September 7, 1898–died in New York on January 13, 1961) was an American novelist, best known for his 1950 novel The Cardinal, detailing the life of Stephen Fermoyle, a young American priest who eventually becomes a Prince of the Church. The story is based in part on the career of Francis Joseph Cardinal Spellman, archbishop of New York (1939-1967). The novel was adapted to an Academy Award nominated film in 1963, directed by Otto Preminger and starring Tom Tryon.

He graduated from Columbia College in 1923 after serving in the US Navy during the First World War.

He was an instructor in English at Columbia University, and a senior editor at Reader's Digest.

On December 23, 1960, he fell asleep in a hot bath after taking a sedative. Three weeks later, on January 13, 1961, he died of complications from the resulting second- and third-degree burns.

He is buried in Artists Cemetery, Woodstock, Ulster County, New York.

[edit] Bibliography

Children of Morningside (1924) poetry
Buck Fever (1929) poetry
Stout Cortez: a Biography of the Spanish Conquest (1931)
Science Versus Crime (1935)
Second Wisdom (1937) poetry
A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, with Joseph Campbell (1944)
The Perfect Round (1945, filmed as "Americana" in 1983)
The Great Snow (1947)
The Cardinal (1950) The life of a Roman Catholic priest.
The Enchanted Grindstone and Other Poems (1952) poetry
Water of Life (1960) Impact of whiskey-making on three generations of an Indiana family.