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Christmas in Maine
This an old favorite of Maine residents, and recounts a Christmas in Maine spent on a saltwater farm on the coast, with family; cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents.
- GenresChristmas
22 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1935
About the author
Robert Peter Tristram Coffin
67 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 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 17, 2026
A great short story full of nostalgia for Christmas.
December 18, 2022
Beautiful woodcut illustrations saved this sort of boring essay! Good for a quick December read aloud.
November 25, 2014
Robert Peter Tristam Coffin (1892-1955) was born just a few years later than my grandparents. He came of fine old Maine stock, was a member of the elite, and loved his home and his state. Christmas In Maine was published in 1942,a number of years before I was born. It is a nostalgic backward look at Christmases past, as Kirkus Review would have it. Indeed, there is that in this little book. But . . . my grandparents still strung cranberries and popped corn as garlands for the Christmas tree. And they made gifts, rather than relying on store "boughten" items. (What would they think of today's world?) But it also reminds me about how the Civil War loomed in the imagination of Mainers, just a few decades after its conclusion. Or how the bays crack and boom when frozen over. Or what woman's work was more than a century ago.
October 28, 2016
I actually have two editions of this book; one is a small pamphlet reprint published here in Brunswick (where Coffin taught at Bowdoin College for many years) in 1948, and the other is the newer illustrated version, which I just got for Christmas last year. It's also included in at least one of the Christmas anthologies I own, and I've been known to read it aloud in various settings. It is a wonderful picture of Coffin's childhood Christmases on a saltwater farm in Harpswell, when people made their own entertainment and nearly all their own Christmas presents. Every Mainer who celebrates Christmas should own this book, and even if you are "from away," I recommend it highly. It deserves a place right alongside Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales.
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December 27, 2015You've heard: '"Vote often and early" says James Michael Curley.' But do you know that every election day, I also say '"Vote early and often" says Robert P. Tristam Coffin'? Who knew that [a] he wrote this book in 1935, long before "A Child's Christmas in Wales" and [b] it was recently reissued with charming woodblock illustrations by Blue Butterfield? A delightful edition, with foreword by a distant Coffin relative. And maybe the illustrator is one of our distant Butterfield cousins.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews