Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay, one of America's talented and controversial poets, was born in Rockland, Maine, on February 22, 1892. Her father was irresponsible with the family's income, therefore her mother Cora separated from him and eventually they were divorced. Cora was a highly influential figure in her daughter's life. Edna and her two sisters were raised with values like female independence, ambition, and open opinions, as well as their mother's love of literature. They were a poor family, often relying on the support of relatives, until they at last obtained a small home in Camden, Maine. Here Millay attended high school, began writing for the school newspaper, and eventually extended to other magazines by the time she was fifteen. In 1912, she submitted her poem 'Renascence' into a contest, which won her fourth place, although it was such an impressive work that nearly everyone involved concurred that she was the rightful first-place winner. From this experience, Millay also attracted a benefactress who paid for her to attend Vassar College, where she graduated from in 1917. This year also saw the publication of her book Renascence and Other Poems.

Millay had a good start on her career as a poet, and also for her rather provacative reputation which would become wilder as she grew older. At her preference, her friends often called her 'Vincent', which had created tension in school when she asked that her teachers do the same. Throughout her life Millay would be known for her feminism and bisexual tendencies. After college she moved to Greenwich Village in New York, a center for the Bohemian lifestyle of the day. Millay embraced the Bohemian life gaily, living in a miniscule attic with hardly any money, and writing as much as she could with hopes of publication. She was rather popular at this time, and between 1920 and 1923 she released three volumes of her poems: A Few Figs From Thistles, Eight Sonnets In American Poetry, and The Balled of the Harp-Weaver. The latter won her the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the year it was published. Millay had numerous romantic relationships with both men and women, and the same year as her Pulitzer honor she decided to marry a Dutch widower named Eugen Jan Boissevain. They shared the feminist perspective, and he gladly supported her literary ambitions, taking for himself the tasks which traditionally fell to the wife's care. Along with their openly feminist attitudes, they both maintained extra-marital relationships during their whole marriage of twenty-six years. Boissevain died on August 29, 1949, of lung cancer.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was found dead on October 19, 1950, having fallen down the stairs at their New York home, Steepletop. Aside from her poetry, she was also a talented playwright, and she has proved to be one of America's greatest and most honored poets.