All About Edna St. Vincent Millay: Ethnicity, Nationality



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Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet and playwright. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry, and was also known for her feminist activism and her many love affairs. She was born in Rockland, Maine, on February 22, 1892, the first child of Cora Lounella Buzelle and Henry Tolman Millay. Her mother was a schoolteacher and her father a newspaperman. She had two sisters, Norma and Kathleen. Millay was educated at home by her mother until she was ten years old, when she was sent to live with her grandparents in Camden, Maine, so that she could attend the local high school. She graduated from high school in 1910 and then enrolled at Vassar College, where she studied English and drama.

Millay’s first poem was published in 1912, while she was still a student at Vassar. After graduation, she moved to New York City, where she worked as a journalist and secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1913, her poem “Renascence” was published in The Lyric Year, an anthology of the best poetry of the year. The poem brought her to the attention of the literary world and established her as a major talent. In 1917, Millay married Eugen Boissevain, a Dutch businessman who was twenty years her senior. The marriage was a happy one, but it was not a sexual relationship; Boissevain was gay. The couple had an open marriage and both had numerous affairs.

Millay had affairs with both men and women, including the writer Dorothy Parker and the actress Mae West. In 1918, Millay’s first collection of poetry, Renascence and Other Poems, was published to great acclaim. Her second collection, A Few Figs from Thistles, was published in 1920. In 1922, she published The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. Millay’s most famous poem, “First Fig,” was published in this collection. In 1923, she published The Buck in the Snow and Other Poems. In 1924, she published what is considered her finest collection of poetry, The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver.

This collection includes her most famous poem, “The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver,” which tells the story of a poor woman who makes a living by weaving harps. In 1925, Millay’s first play, The Lamp and the Bell, was produced on Broadway. The play was a success and established her as a major dramatist. In 1928, she published Collected Poems. In 1931, she published Fatal Interview, a collection of poems about her love affairs. In 1932, she divorced Boissevain and married George Dillon, a gay poet and professor. The marriage was short-lived and ended in divorce.

In 1934, she published Wine from These Grapes, a collection of poems about her failed marriage to Dillon. In 1936, she published Make Bright the Arrows, a collection of patriotic poems written during World War II. In 1943, she published Collected Poems: 1936-1943. In 1950, she published Mine the Harvest: A Collection of New Poems. This collection includes her most famous poem, “Love Is Not All: It Is Not Meat nor Drink,” which tells the story of a woman who is dying of love. Millay died of breast cancer on October 19, 1950. ..

Source: IMDb, Wikipedia