Chronology and Bibliography of Elizabeth Robins:

See where Robins lived

Life and Major Works

Prepared by Joanne E. Gates
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1862, August 6. Born, Louisville, Kentucky. First child of the second marriage of Charles E. Robins and his first cousin, Hannah M. (Crow) Robins. The family moved to Staten Island shortly after the Civil War.

1872. Begins attendance at Putnam Female Seminary, living with her grandmother at her home, the Stone Academy, in Zanesville, Ohio.

1880, summer: travels with father to visit mining camps near Summit, Colorado; fall and winter: in the company of her father visits theater in New York and Washington.

1881-2. Relocates to Staten Island and New York City, staying with family friends while she looks for stage work. Accepts position with James O'Neill's touring company.

1883-5. Actress for Boston Museum Theatre.

1885, January 12. Marries fellow actor George Richmond Parks in private ceremony in Salem, Massachusetts. When her manager finds out about their marriage, Robins's contract is not renewed.

1885, October. Death of ER's grandmother, Jane Hussey Robins, in Zanesville, Ohio.

1885, December. Triumphal appearance of ER in the Zanesville Opera House, playing Mercedes in James O'Neill's Count of Monte Cristo. She hears later that night of her father's journey to deliver her mother to a mental asylum.

1886, fall. Resigns from O'Neill's Monte Cristo tour when her sister, Una (Eunice) dies in Florida.

1887, May 31. George Parks drowns himself in the Charles River, Boston. His body is discovered two weeks later.

1887-8. On tour across America with the Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett company.

1888. Released from her acting contract in San Francisco, returns to the East Coast by way of Central America. Travels with Sarah Bull to London and Norway. With encouragement from actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, decides to stay in London.

1890. First Publication: "Across America with 'Junius Brutus Booth'," published in the July issue of The Universal Review Vol. VII, No. 27 (July 1890), 375-392..

1890. Visits Passion Play in Oberammergau, secures part in The Sixth Commandment, arranges for her brother Vernon to study medicine in London.

1891, January. Plays Mrs. Linde in matinée production of A Doll's House. Meets Henry James.

1891, April. Ibsen's Hedda Gabler co-produced with fellow American actress, Marion Lea, Robins playing Hedda.

1892, fall. Begins first full-length fiction,The Coming Woman," unfinished.

1893. Alan's Wife (with Florence Bell). London: Heinemann. Robins plays the title role in the Independent Theatre's production.

1893, April. Charles E. Robins dies. ER organizes the Ibsen Repertory Series, for which she plays the parts of Hedda Gabler, Hilda Wangel, Rebecca West, Agnes Brand.

1894, January. Anonymous publication of first short story, "A Lucky Sixpence," New Review, 10, no. 56 (January, 1894), 105-126.

1894. George Mandeville's Husband. London: Heinemann. Published under the pseudonym C. E. Raimond.

1895. The New Moon. London: Heinemann. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Published under the pseudonym C. E. Raimond.

1895. September. Short story "Miss de Maupassant" appears in The New Review (Vol. 13, No. 76), 233-247

1896. Below the Salt and Other Stories. London: Heinemann. Printed in the U.S. as "The Fatal Gift of Beauty" and Other Stories. Chicago: H. S. Stone and Co. Both editions published under the pseudonym C. E. Raimond.

1897. The New Century Theatre formed in London.

1898, March. Performs Hedda Gabler in New York. Travels on to Jacksonville, Illinois, to visit Hannah Robins in Oak Lawn asylum. Her brother Vernon later credits ER for convincing their uncle that Hannah should be released.

1898, November. The Open Question: A Tale of Two Temperaments. London: Heinemann. First edition published under the pseudonym, C. E. Raimond. Her identity is disclosed in the press shortly afterwards. Leipzig, 1899; New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899.

1899. Visits Italian Alps. Writes The Mills of the Gods, Benvenuto Cellini.

1899. June. Publishes A Modern Woman Born 1689, in The Anglo-Saxon Review. Review essay of the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

1900, March. Leaves London for New York, Boston, Seattle, and trip to Alaska.

1900, April 5. Begins making diary entries in large journal volume.

1900, June 14. Arrives in Nome.

1900, July 26. Departs Nome for trip up the Yukon River.

1900, August 5. Saxton Robins joins ER on her steamer, traveling a part of a day from Anvik to Greyling.

1900, August 19. "Elizabeth Robins at Cape Nome," Seattle Post Intelligencer [publication of her Alaska letters subtitled "Living Under Martial Law" and "The Court Arrives"].

1900. September 1. ER is admitted to the Seattle General Hospital, suffering from typhoid.

1900, October 17. Raymond returns to Seattle; they travel together to Louisville.

1900, October. "The Very Latest Gold Field in the Arctic Circle," Review of Reviews, London edition, XXII: 343-345 (letter from Grantley Harbor, Alaska).

1900, November 18. Elizabeth Robins's last diary entry, mid- Atlantic ocean, en route to London.

1900, December. "On Seeing Madame Bernhardt's Hamlet," North American Review, 171 (December, 1900), 908-919.

1901, January. "The Gold Miners of the Frozen North: A Visit to Cape Nome," Pall Mall Magazine, Vol. 23; 55-65, with photographs.

1901, February. Raymond Robins visits ER in England.

1901. While traveling in Italy, midsummer, ER learns of the deaths of Saxton and Hannah Robins. Begins "Yukon Sketches," which develops into The Magnetic North.

1901. September. "Embryo Americans," Harper's Magazine, 593- 502.

1902. "Pleasure Mining," Fortnightly Review, 77: 474-486.

1902, fall. Last professional stage appearance, in Mrs. Humphrey Ward's Eleanor.

1903. November. "The Alaska Boundary," Fortnightly Review, 80: 792-799.

1904. The Magnetic North. London: Heinemann; New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company; Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz; Toronto: McLeod and Allen. Reprint, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Gregg Press, 1969.

1904. ER undergoes rest cure.

1905. Raymond purchases "Chinsegut" in Hernando County, Florida.

1905, May. " Monica's Village." Century Magazine, 19-30; reprinted in The Mills of the Gods and Other Stories (1920).

1905, June. ER travels to New York for Raymond's marriage to Margaret Dreier.

1905. Publication in The Pall Mall Magazine of "The Caribou Stand" Vol. 35. Like "Monica's Village," this story was conceived as a chapter of The Magnetic North. Presumably it was deleted from the published book for length considerations.

1905. A Dark Lantern. London: Heinemann; Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz; New York: The Macmillan Company.

1906. Begins Come and Find Me, based on her trip to Nome and the legend of the swindling of the initial discoveries in the area. Working titles, "The Mother Lode," "The Great Legacy." Revisits Chinsegut.

1907, April. Votes for Women, the only play by ER to be produced and published, is staged under the direction of Harley Granville Barker at the Court Theatre, London.

1907, October. The Convert, novel based on her suffrage play. London: Methuen; New York: Gross and Dunlap, Macmillan's Standard Library. Reprint, London: The Woman's Press, 1980 (in U.S., Feminist Press), with introduction by Jane Marcus.

1907. Under the Southern Cross [working title: "The Peruvian"]. New York: Frederick A. Stokes. [Begun 1888, completed 1899.]

1908. Come and Find Me. New York: The Century Company; London: William Heinemann. Serialized in Century Magazine, April 1907-March 1908. Also Nelson's Library edition, 1915.

1908. Purchases Backsettown, a centuries-old farmhouse, in Henfield, Sussex.

1908, June and July. The Mills of the Gods. Fortnightly Review; New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1908; reprinted in "The Mills of the Gods" and Other Stories (1920).

1909. The Florentine Frame. London: John Murray, 1909; New York: Moffat, Yard and Company; Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz. Reissued, London: E. Nasy & Grayson, 1929.

1909. Begins "Bowarra," a children's play based on Eskimo animal legends and materials from The Magnetic North. Harley Granville Barker provided suggestions for revision and staging possibilities, later including marketing it to cinema firms in America after World War I. Unproduced and unpublished.

1910. December. " Miss Cal," English Review (December 1910); McClures, 36: 218-228. Reprinted in The Mills of the Gods and Other Stories (1920).

1913. My Little Sister. (American title of Where Are You Going To? London: William Heinemann.) Serialized in McClures, 40 (December 1912), 121-145 and January 1913, 253-260; New York: Dodd, Mead.

1913. Way Stations. New York: Dodd, Mead; London, New York, Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton; Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz. A collection of suffrage essays, speeches, published letters, with "Time Table" commentaries on the events of the Votes for Women campaign in Great Britain.

1915-17. ER volunteers for war relief work in England. Assists with the library at the Endell Street Hospital; visits schools to lecture on behalf of the Ministry of Food.

1918. Camilla. New York: Dodd, Mead; London: Hodder and Stoughton.

1919. The Messenger. New York: Century; London: Hodder and Stoughton. (Serialized in Century Magazine, November 1918-July 1919.)

1919. "A New View of Country Life." Published in March 1919. A Profile of the Women's Institutes.

1920. The Mills of the Gods and Other Stories. London: Thornton Butterworth.

"Bolt Seventeen," Fortnightly Vol. CVII, Jan-June 1920, pages 71-76.

1920. Prudence and Peter (with Octavia Wilberforce). Serialized in Time and Tide, May 21, 1920, for ten weekly installments. Book edition, London: Ernest Benn, 1928; New York: W. Morrow, 1928 (with drawings by Lois Lenski).

1923. Time is Whispering. New York and London: Harper and Brothers; London: Hutchinson.

1924. Ancilla's Share: An Indictment of Sex Antagonism. London: Hutchinson. First edition published anonymously. Reprint, Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press, 1976.

1926. The Secret That Was Kept. New York and London: Harper; London: Hutchinson.

1927-30. Works on "Rocky Mountain Journal," autobiographical novel based on her visit to Colorado mining camps in 1880. Not published.

1928. Delivers talk on Ibsen for the BBC, and "Ibsen and the Actress" for Ibsen Centennial. Ibsen and the Actress published as a pamphlet by Hogarth Press.

1932. Theatre and Friendship: Some Henry James Letters with a Commentary by Elizabeth Robins. London: Jonathan Cape; New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

1932, fall. ER departs for America after learning that Raymond has disappeared. She rereads her 1900 diary and proposes a memoir of Raymond based on her record of their weeks in Nome. Raymond is discovered, recovering from amnesia, in North Carolina, and ER visits him briefly.

1933-4. ER works on "Raymond and I and Our Magnetic North," which Raymond forbids her to publish while he is alive.

1940. Both Sides of the Curtain. London: Heinemann.

1948. Memoir of W. T. Stead. Unpublished.

1952, May 8. ER. dies in Brighton, England.

1956. Raymond and I. London: Hogarth Press; New York: Macmillan.