Edna St Vincent Millay

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ESVM was a charismatic American poet of the earlier twentieth century, who through her lifestyle came to stand for the sexually and economically liberated woman of the 1920s. She wrote particularly sonnets, love lyrics, and plays, as well as short stories, a libretto, and life-writing in the form of diaries and letters. From the beginning her work included passionate anti-war writing, which paved the way during the early years of the second world war for polemic against America's isolationist stance. Her later poems reach a deeper and more serious register, but by then her reputation was already in sharp decline. In 1937 John Crowe Ransom accused her of deficiency in masculinity. Though later commentators have generally been more tactful and less crass, a more recent poet, J. D. McClatchy , observes that this kind of venomous condescension has echoed down the years.
Millay, Edna St Vincent. “Introduction”. Selected Poems, edited by J. D. McClatchy, The Library of America, 2003, p. xvii - xxxiii.
xix
  • BirthName: Edna St Vincent Millay
  • Nickname: Vincent
    She was known by this name in her family and by some close friends in maturity as well as in youth.

  • Self-constructed: E. Vincent Millay
    This was how she generally signed her early writings, hoping to be taken for a man.
    Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House, 2001.
    64
  • Married: Boissevain
  • Pseudonym: Nancy Boyd
    This was the birth name of one of her great-grandmothers.
    Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House, 2001.
    173

Milestones

22 February 1892

ESVM was born on George Washington 's birthday in Rockland, a small town in Maine, the eldest of three sisters.
American National Biography. http://www.anb.org/articles/home.html.
Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House, 2001.
18

October 1906

The fourteen-year-old ESVM published the poem Forest Trees in St Nicholas Magazine.
Brittin, Norman A., editor. Edna St. Vincent Millay. Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1967.
2

June 1918

Harriet Monroe published in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse five poems by ESVM , including the one that has remained her best-known work, the single quatrain whose title, First Fig, is less familiar than its entire text.
Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House, 2001.
xiii, 160

September 1920

A Few Figs from Thistles: Poems and Four Sonnets (ESVM 's second volume of verse, made up in pretty, brightly coloured paper),
Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House, 2001.
198
came out while her Second April was still stalled at the proof stage.
Yost, Karl, and Harold Lewis Cook. A Bibliography of the Works of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Harper, 1965.
82-83
Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House, 2001.
198

19 October 1942

Four months after Nazis massacred the inhabitants of the Czech village of Lidice, ESVM 's long, dramatic verse narrative The Murder of Lidice was broadcast by NBC throughout both the USA and war-torn Europe.
Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House, 2001.
470

19 October 1950

ESVM died alone in the early hours of the morning at Steepletop, her home near Austerlitz, New York, in the Berkshire Hills, by falling downstairs.
Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House, 2001.
508

Biography

Birth and Family

22 February 1892

ESVM was born on George Washington 's birthday in Rockland, a small town in Maine, the eldest of three sisters.
American National Biography. http://www.anb.org/articles/home.html.
Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House, 2001.
18