Richard Aldridge was born in New York City in 1930. Shortly after graduating from Amherst College, he first published his poems in "New Poems by American Poets" (1953). After service in the U.S. Army and a fellowship at Oxford, Aldridge moved to Maine. He and his wife Josephine Haskell lived in Bath, where he worked as a teacher at two schools and wrote poetry in his spare time. He retired in 1985 to write full time.

Aldridge's published work includes "Richard Aldridge: Poems", a chapbook published while he was at Oxford in 1957; "An Apology Both Ways" (1957); "Down Through The Clouds, The Sea" (1963); "The Wild White Rose; "Poems" (1974); "Red Pine, Black Ash" (1980); and "Driving North" (1989). In 2001 his wife, Josephine was the compiler for "The Poems of Richard Aldridge". In addition, he and Josephine collaborated on the children's book, "Reasons and Raisins" (1972).

He was the editor/compiler of "Maine Lines; 101 Contemporary Poems about Maine" (1970); "Poetry Amherst: a Sesquicentennial Anthology of Poems by Alumni of Amherst College" (1972); "Memories of Morse, 1904-1979: A Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Tribute to Morse High School in Bath, Maine" (1979); "Speaking of New England: The Place & Her People: 72 Poems by 56 of Her Poets Past and Present" (1993).