Robinson was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, the daughter of James Frank and Mary Anna Dean Robinson. She attended normal school after graduating from high school and taught primary grades for a short time. She attended Radcliffe College and then taught zoology at Wellesley College from 1904 to 1906. While teaching several subjects at Constantinople College in Turkey for two years and doing research at the Carnegie Foundation for another two years, she worked on her master's degree (1907) and her Ph.D. (1915) at Columbia University. She remained at Columbia to conduct workshops in advanced fiction writing from 1919 until 1945. After that time, she taught part-time at Columbia. One of her proudest achievements was that her workshop students produced approximately two hundred books. She never thought highly of her Ph.D. or any other academic achievement. A colleague worried that Robinson's first book, Dr. Tam O'Shanter, which appeared in St. Nicholas Magazine , seemed as important to Robinson as getting the doctorate. Robinson agreed, cheerfully, and added that it was possibly more important, for she felt the Ph.D. was a dull necessity, not nearly as valuable as writing interesting books for young people. One of her short stories, "Called For," appeared in the O.
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