1914 - 1919

Randall Jarrell was born on May 6, 1914 in Nashville, Tennessee, to Owen and Anna Campbell Jarrell. A single sister, died in infancy before Randall Jarrell's birth. Brother Charles was born in 1915 after the family had moved to California. His father worked as assistant to a children's photographer in Los Angeles but soon opened his own studio.

1920 - 1929

Poor economic conditions forced the family to move to Long Beach, California. His mother had a "delicate constitution" to which Jarrell refers in the poem Hope. Relations between his parents became strained. His maternal uncle Howell Campbell, moved his mother and the children back to Nashville, Tennessee, and his parents divorced. His mother took a job as an English teacher at a secretarial school in Nashville. Randall Jarrell worked as a paper boy and sold Christmas wrappings door-to-door during this period. He did well in school and developed a love of libraries at the Carnegie Library in Nashville.

1930 - 1939

• 1935 A.B. Degree, Vanderbilt University.
• 1937 - 1939 Instructor, Kenyon College, Gambier, OH.
• 1938 A.M. Degree, Vanderbilt University.
• 1939 - 1942 Instructor in English, University of Texas at Austin.

1940 - 1949

• 1939 - 1942 Instructor in English, University of Texas at Austin.
• 1940 Five Young American Poets (poems>, New Directions, contributor.
• 1942 Blood for a Stranger (poems), Harcourt.
• 1942 - 1946 U.S. Army Air Forces (Celestial Navigation Tower Operator).
• 1945 Little Friend, Little Friend (poems), Dial.
• 1946 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry.
• 1946 - 1947 Instructor in English, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY.

• 1947 - 1951 Associate Professor of English, Woman's College of the University of North Carolina (now University of North Carolina at Greensboro).
• 1948 Losses (poems), Harcourt.
• 1948 Ferdinand Gregorovius, The Ghetto and the Jews of Rome (translator), Schocken.
• 1948 Levinson Prize.
• 1948 - Taught at the Salzburg Seminar in American Civilization, Salzburg, Austria.
• 1949 - 1951 Acting Literary Editor, The Nation.
• 1949 - 1951 Poetry Critic, Partisan Review.

1950 - 1959

• 1951 The Seven-League Crutches (poems), Harcourt.
• 1951 Oscar Blumenthal Prize.
• 1951 National Institute of Arts and Letters Grant.
• 1951 - 1952 Visiting Professor, Princeton University.
• 1951 - 1952 Visiting Fellow in Creative Writing, Princeton University.
• 1953 Poetry and the Age (criticism), Knopf.
• 1953 Visiting Professor, University of Illinois.

• 1953 - 1954 Associate Professor of English, Woman's College of the University of North Carolina (University of North Carolina at Greensboro).
• 1954 Pictures from an Institution (novel), Knopf.
• 1955 Selected Poems (editor), Knopf.
• 1955 - 1957 Poetry Critic, Yale Review.
• 1956 - 1958 Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.
• 1957 - 1965 Member of the Editorial Board, American Scholar.
• 1958 The Anchor Book of Stories (prose), Doubleday Anchor.
• 1958 Uncollected Poems (poems), Cincinnati.
• 1958 - 1965 Professor of English, Woman's College of the University of North Carolina (University of North Carolina at Greensboro).
• 1958 - 1965 George Elliston Lecturer, University of Cincinnati.

1960 - 1965

• 1958 - 1965 Professor of English, Woman's College of the University of North Carolina (University of North Carolina at Greensboro).
• 1958 - 1965 George Elliston Lecturer, University of Cincinnati.
• 1960 The Woman at the Washington Zoo (poems and translations), Atheneum.
• 1961 National Book Award for The Woman at the Washington Zoo.
• 1961 The Best Short Stories of Rudyard Kipling (editor), Doubleday.

• 1962 A Sad Heart at the Supermarket (essays), Atheneum.
• 1962 Ludwig Beckstein, The Rabbit Catcher (translator), Macmillan.
• 1962 Jakob Grimm, The Golden Bird (translator), Macmillan.
• 1962 O. Max Gardner Award.
• 1962 Honorary D.H.L. Degree, Bard College.
• 1962 Ingram-Merrill Literary Award.
• 1963 Rudyard Kipling, The English in England (editor), Doubleday.
• 1963 Rudyard Kipling, In the Vernacular: The English in India (editor), Doubleday.
• 1963 Six Russian Short Novels (editor), Doubleday.
• 1963 The Gingerbread Rabbit (juvenile), Macmillan.
• 1964 The Bat Poet (juvenile), Macmillan.
• 1964 Anton Chekhov, "The Three Sisters," (translator), Morosco Theatre.
• 1964 - 1965 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, University of Cincinnati.
• 1965 The Lost World (poems), Macmillan.
• 1965 The Animal Family (juvenile), illus. Maurice Sendak, Pantheon.
• 1965 Fellow, Indiana University School of Letters.
• 1965 Died October 14 at Chapel Hill, NC, after having been struck by a car.