Image of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Timeline

Lifetime: 1892 - 1950 Passed: ≈ 74 years ago

Title

Poet, Playwright

Country/Nationality

United States
Wikipedia

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet and playwright.

Encouraged to read the classics at home, she was too rebellious to make a success of formal education, but she won poetry prizes from an early age, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1923, and went on to use verse as a medium for her feminist activism. She also wrote verse-dramas and a highly praised opera, The King's Henchman. Her novels appeared under the name Nancy Boyd, and she refused lucrative offers to publish them under her own name.

Millay was a prominent social figure of New York City's Greenwich Village just as it was becoming known as a bohemian writer's colony, and she was noted for her uninhibited lifestyle, forming many passing relationships with both men and women. She was also a social and political activist and those relationships included prominent anti-war activists including Floyd Dell, editor of the radical magazine The Masses, and perhaps John Reed. She became a prominent feminist of her time; her poetry and her example, both subversive, inspired a generation of American women.

Her career as a poet was meteoric. In 1923 she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer prize in poetry. She became a performance artist super-star, reading her poetry to rapt audiences across the country.

A road accident in middle-age left her a partial invalid and morphine-dependent for years. Yet near the end of her life, she wrote some of her greatest poetry.

Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, to Cora Lounella Buzelle, a nurse, and Henry Tolman Millay, a schoolteacher who would later become a superintendent of schools. Her middle name derives from St. Vincent's Hospital in New York, where her uncle's life had been saved just before her birth. The family's house was "between the mountains and the sea where baskets of apples and drying herbs on the porch mingled their scents with those of the neighboring pine woods." Edna's mother attended a Congregational church. In 1904, Cora officially divorced Millay's father for financial irresponsibility and domestic abuse, but they had already been separated for some years. Henry and Edna kept a letter correspondence for many years, but he never re-entered the family. Cora and her three daughters – Edna (who called herself "Vincent"), Norma Lounella (born 1893), and Kathleen Kalloch (born 1896) – moved from town to town, living in poverty and surviving various illnesses. Cora travelled with a trunk full of classic literature, including Shakespeare and Milton, which she read to her children. The family settled in a small house on the property of Cora's aunt in Camden, Maine, where Millay would write the first of the poems that would bring her literary fame.

Millay died at her home on October 19, 1950. She had fallen down stairs and was found approximately eight hours after her death. Her physician reported that she had suffered a heart attack following a coronary occlusion. She was 58 years old. She is buried alongside her husband at Steepletop, Austerlitz, New York.

Books by Edna St. Vincent Millay

A Few Figs from Thistles  Cover image

A Few Figs from Thistles

Poetry
Young Spirit Single Author Collections Poems Society Gender Sonnets

Millay's second collection of poetry, originally published in 1920 with 15 poems and then expanded with 8 more by the 1922 edition. She wrote them while living in the bohemian West Village. Almost all poems reflect a free-spirited young woman unwilli...

Grown-Up Cover image

Grown-Up

Poetry
Poems America Verses Feminism United States

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet and playwright. She won poetry prizes from an early age, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1923, and went on to use verse as a medium for her feminist activism. She also wrote verse-dramas and a high...

Recuerdo Cover image

Recuerdo

Poetry Memoir Non-Fiction
Love Beauty Nature Time Loss Nostalgia Memory Poetry Grief Regret Edna St. Vincent Millay American poetry 20th century poetry

LibriVox volunteers bring you nine different recordings of Recuerdo, by Edna St. Vincent Millay. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of July 16th, 2006.(Summary by Annie Coleman)

Singing-Woman from the Wood's Edge Cover image

Singing-Woman from the Wood's Edge

Poetry Fairy Tale Mythology
Nature Poetry Folklore Myth Millay Edna St. Vincent Woman Woods Singing Halloween

LibriVox volunteers bring you eight different recordings of The Singing-Woman from the Wood's Edge, by Edna St. Vincent Millay, to celebrate Halloween. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of October 29th, 2006.

Second April Cover image

Second April

Poetry Non-Fiction Essays
Love Beauty Imagery Death Nature Time Loss Life Hope Emotion Feminism Poetry Despair Modernism Melancholy

A collection of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Ballad of the Harp-Weaver Cover image

Ballad of the Harp-Weaver

Poetry Fantasy Romance Tragedy
Love Metaphor Beauty Imagery Death Nature Fate Symbolism Sacrifice Art Destiny Loss Poetry Fantasy Grief Motherhood Ballad Harp Weaver Daughter

LibriVox volunteers bring you 7 different recordings of The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Renascence and Other Poems Cover image

Renascence and Other Poems

Poetry Non-Fiction Biography
Love Beauty Death Nature Modernist Freedom Life Spirituality Rebellion Poetry Feminist American Edna St. Vincent Millay 20th century Millay Vassar Early works

The following is a recording of the first volume of poetry published by Edna St. Vincent Millay. When the author had graduated from high school, she couldn't afford to go to college. In the summer of 1912, Vincent's sister, Norma, found work as a wai...

Poems Cover image

Poems

This volume of poems was published in 1923, the year Edna St. Vincent Millay became the third woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. It was perhaps the lead poem in this volume, Renascence, published in 1918 in a literary contest that first won...

Penitent Cover image

Penitent

LibriVox volunteers bring you12 recordings of The Penitent by Edna St. Vincent Millay. This was the Weekly Poetry project for May 5, 2019. ------ A saucy little poem about a girl with a guilt free conscience! A very prolific poet and playwright,...

Harp-Weaver, and Other Poems Cover image

Harp-Weaver, and Other Poems

Although Edna St. Vincent Millay was gaining recognition for her lyrical poems since 1920, it was winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 for "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver" that established her career as a poet. In 1943, Millay was the sixth p...

I, Being Born a Woman Cover image

I, Being Born a Woman

LibriVox volunteers bring you 19 recordings of I, Being Born a Woman by Edna St. Vincent Millay This was the Weekly Poetry project for September 24, 2023. ------ Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyr...