"Miniver Cheevy" is a narrative poem written by Edwin Arlington Robinson, published in The Town down the River in 1910. The poem (written in quatrains of iambic tetrameter for three lines, followed by a catalectic line of only three iambs), relates the story of a hopeless romantic who spends his days thinking about what might have been if only he had been born in a nobler and more romantic era.
Some scholars suggest that the character of Miniver is meant to be Robinson's self-aware skewering of his own sense of being an anachronism or throwback, but others add that Miniver represents a critique of the general culture of Robinson's time. Regardless, the character portrait is similar to Robinson's Richard Cory, a deeply discontented individual unable to fit in with society and bent on self-destruction. Robinson's preoccupation with such characters is one of the reasons he was called "America's poet laureate of unhappiness."
References in popular culture
In Woody Allen's 2011 film Midnight in Paris, the lead character Gil is compared to Miniver Cheevy by a condescending friend of his fiancée.
In Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Major Major Major Major is also compared with Miniver Cheevy because of his late birth.
Helene Hanff compared herself to Miniver Cheevy, in her 1970 book 84, Charing Cross Road.