Except for the three and a half years he served in the Pacific Theatre during World War II, he spent most of his life in New York State.
Only near the end of his life did the science fiction community learn he had been a janitor in the Buffalo public school system.
His production started in 1953 in Startling Stories, then Playboy, The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's.
It mainly consisted of a long list of short stories with a poetic and romantic style which led to his work being compared to Ray Bradbury and Theodore Sturgeon.
Robert F. Young wrote only five novels, including La Quete de la Sainte Grille (1975), an expansion of his short story "The Quest of the Holy Grille" which was released only in France and written in French.