Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
Author of Collected Poems
About the Author
Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892-1950 Edna St. Vincent Millay, American poet, dramatist, lyricist, lecturer, and playwright, was born on February 22, 1892 in Rockland, Maine, and educated at Barnard College and at Vassar College, where she earned her B. A. (Her poem "Renascence" won fourth place in a show more contest and was published in The Lyric Year in 1912; this resulted in a scholarship to Vassar.) Millay's first volume of poetry, "Renascence and Other Poems," was published in 1917. In 1923, "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver" won her a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Other works include: "A Few Figs from Thistles;" "Sonnets in American Poetry," "A Miscellany," "The Lamp and the Bell" and "There Are No Islands Any More." Millay also wrote the libretto for "The King's Henchman," one of the few American grand operas. Edna St. Vincent Millay married Eugen Jan Boissevain in 1923. Shortly after, they purchased a farm in upstate New York, which they called Steepletop. Millay lived here for the rest of her life, composing some of her finest work in a little shack separate from the main house. Boissevain died in 1949. Millay died of a heart attack in her home on October 19, 1950. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Courtesy of the NYPL Digital Gallery (image use requires permission from the New York Public Library)
Works by Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay: Renascence And Other Poems, a Few Figs from Thistles, Second April, And (2004) 17 copies
There Are No Islands, Any More: Lines Written in Passion and in Deep Concern for England, France and My Own Country (1940) 12 copies
Lyrics and Sonnets 5 copies
What lips my lips have kissed [poem] 4 copies
Second April and Other Poems 3 copies
Renascence [poem] 2 copies
L'amor no ho és tot: Antologia poètica (Poesia dels Quaderns Crema) (Catalan Edition) (2008) 2 copies
The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems 2 copies
Renascence, & Other Poems 2 copies
Poems 2 copies
Edna St. Vincent Millay - Second April: "The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed" (2020) 1 copy
El amor no lo es todo 1 copy
The Pertinent 1 copy
Renascence, Second April, and A Few Figs from Thistles: Early Works of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Kennebec Large Print… (2010) 1 copy
Conscientious Objector 1 copy
Harper's modern classics 1 copy
Collected Sonnets 1 copy
Second Fig {poem} 1 copy
Thursday {poem} 1 copy
MacDougal Street {poem} 1 copy
Interim {poem} 1 copy
The Suicide {poem} 1 copy
God's World {poem} 1 copy
The First Fig {poem} 1 copy
The True Encounter {poem} 1 copy
Wine From These Grapes. Includes October-an Etching; From a Train Window; Valentine; Aubade; Sappho Crosses Dark River… (1934) 1 copy
Wild Swans {poem} 1 copy
Passer Mortuus Est {poem} 1 copy
Inland {poem} 1 copy
The challenge to civilization : report of the ninth annual New York Herald Tribune Forum on Current Problems — Contributor — 1 copy
Recuerdo {poem} 1 copy
Associated Works
The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Robert Frost (2004) — Contributor — 1,013 copies
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (1995) — Contributor, some editions — 901 copies
American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume One: Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker (2000) — Contributor — 424 copies
Poetry Speaks Expanded: Hear Poets Read Their Own Work from Tennyson to Plath (2007) — Contributor — 147 copies
The Graphic Canon, Vol. 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest (2013) — Contributor — 141 copies
An American Album: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Harper's Magazine (2000) — Contributor — 129 copies
Writing New York: A Literary Anthology (Expanded 10th-Anniversary Edition) (2008) — Contributor — 92 copies
Gentlemen, Scholars and Scoundrels: A Treasury of the Best of Harper's Magazine from 1850 to the Present (1959) — Contributor — 55 copies
The Web She Weaves: An Anthology of Mystery and Suspense Stories by Women (1983) — Contributor — 51 copies
Out of the Best Books: An Anthology of Literature, Vol. 2: Love, Marriage, and the Family (1966) — Contributor — 38 copies
Out of the Best Books: An Anthology of Literature, Vol. 3: Intelligent Family Living (1967) — Contributor — 33 copies
Out of the Best Books: An Anthology of Literature, Vol. 4: The World Around Us (1968) — Contributor — 29 copies
Twenty Five Best Plays of the Modern American Theatre: Early Series (1949) — Contributor — 24 copies
The Tavern Lamps Are Burning: Literary Journeys through Six Regions and Four Centuries of New York State (1964) — Contributor — 18 copies
Six Great American Poets: Poems by Poe, Dickinson, Whitman, Longfellow, Frost and Millay (Dover Thrift Editions) (1992) — Contributor — 13 copies
American poets, an anthology of contemporary verse — Contributor — 4 copies
Murder Mixture: An Anthology of Crime Stories — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Millay, Edna St. Vincent
- Other names
- Boyd, Nancy
- Birthdate
- 1892-02-22
- Date of death
- 1950-10-19
- Burial location
- Steepletop Cemetery, Austerlitz, Columbia County, New York, USA
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Rockland, Maine, USA
- Place of death
- Austerlitz, New York, USA
- Places of residence
- Rockland, Maine, USA
Poughkeepsie, New York, USA
New York, New York, USA
Paris, France
Camden, Maine, USA - Education
- Vassar College (BA|1917)
Camden High School - Occupations
- poet
short-story writer
actress
playwright
librettist - Relationships
- Van Stockum, Hilda (niece)
Boissevain, Eugen Jan (husband) - Organizations
- American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature, 1929)
- Awards and honors
- Frost Medal (1943)
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1923) - Short biography
- Edna St. Vincent Millay pulled herself out of a poverty-stricken childhood and became queen of the Bohemians during her years in New York's Greenwich Village. She expressed the recklessness of the Lost Generation of writers and artists following World War I with her famous poem "First Fig" ("my candle burns at both ends. . ."). She was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Members
Reviews
I’m a fan of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry, so when I ran across a quotation of a few lines from this book, I decided to check it out. It’s an eighty-five-year-old stage play in verse, recounting the after-dinner talk of Ricardo, a wealthy sophisticate with a townhouse in Greenwich Village, and his six dinner guests. Since the far-ranging snippets touch on many political and social issues of the time, eight years into the Great Depression and on the eve of World War Two (with war already underway in China, Ethiopia, and Spain), I was prepared for much of the dialogue to be dated. This was less the case than I expected (sad to say).
Instead, the weakness lies in the characters. They are types, not persons: A stockbroker, a poor poet blindly defending Stalin, a frustrated fine artist who gets by on portrait commissions, a writer of short stories, a priest, and a young advertising copywriter. The exchanges, particularly heated between the broker and the poet, yield few surprises, and I didn’t notice any character development.
I was fascinated that Millay assembled an all-male group. This struck me even before the extended disquisition on the foibles of women that opened Part Two.
As for the writing: some of it, particularly the soliloquies written as sonnets, was fine. Millay displays a gift for aphorism. In addition to the lament that Babel is here and now that led me to read this, there is this on the economy: “I’m beginning to wonder what the hell / We buy that’s half so precious as what we sell.” Or this: “Hypocrisy is not to be despised, it is the pimp of Empire, but it presupposes / The existence in the community of a spiritual force for good, that must be courted and betrayed / Into connivance with evil before the planned step can be made.” As contemporary as the run-up to the Iraq War.… (more)
Instead, the weakness lies in the characters. They are types, not persons: A stockbroker, a poor poet blindly defending Stalin, a frustrated fine artist who gets by on portrait commissions, a writer of short stories, a priest, and a young advertising copywriter. The exchanges, particularly heated between the broker and the poet, yield few surprises, and I didn’t notice any character development.
I was fascinated that Millay assembled an all-male group. This struck me even before the extended disquisition on the foibles of women that opened Part Two.
As for the writing: some of it, particularly the soliloquies written as sonnets, was fine. Millay displays a gift for aphorism. In addition to the lament that Babel is here and now that led me to read this, there is this on the economy: “I’m beginning to wonder what the hell / We buy that’s half so precious as what we sell.” Or this: “Hypocrisy is not to be despised, it is the pimp of Empire, but it presupposes / The existence in the community of a spiritual force for good, that must be courted and betrayed / Into connivance with evil before the planned step can be made.” As contemporary as the run-up to the Iraq War.… (more)
RENASCENCE by Edna St. Vincent Millay, was, I know, considered a groundbreaking classic in its time, and a treasured book of my mom's, but sorry, Mom. I read the whole book in about forty minutes. I just couldn't relate to all the gloom and doom, and the stilted, archaic rhyming that, to me, was reminiscent of Poe. For me it was just barely an 'okay.' I have my mother's 1917 hardback (first?) edition of the book, published by Harper & Brothers. Content-wise I couldn't recommend it. But I wonder if it's valuable.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (more)
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (more)
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Statistics
- Works
- 113
- Also by
- 69
- Members
- 5,809
- Popularity
- #4,240
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 76
- ISBNs
- 182
- Languages
- 5
- Favorited
- 83
- Touchstones
- 138
Renascence
Inland
Burial
Lament
Exiled
Ode to Silence
Sonnets ("We talk of taxes...")
"Yours is a face of which I can forget
The colour and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set."