Edna St. Vincent Millais

Poet and playwright

Born in Rockland, Maine, graduated from Vassar College (1917) having already won fame with the publication of Renascence (1912), the title poem of her first volume Renascence and Other Poems (1917), which exhibited technical virtuosity and startling freshness. She then moved to Greenwich Village in New York, where she wrote poetry and plays, as well as journalistic pieces.

In late 1912 she spent some time in Vienna, Austria, travelled through Italy and Albania, and went to Paris where she met Djuna Barnes. Her work include: A Few Figs from Thistles (1920), and Second April (1921). While living in Greenwich Village, she became associated with the Provincetown Players, for whom she wrote The Princess Marries the Page (1918), Aria da Capo (1919), and Two Slatterns and a King (1921), all one-act satirical fantasies. The Lamp and the Bell (1921) is a five-act poetic drama.

Other works were: The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923, Pulitzer Price), The Buck in the Snow (1828), Fatal Interview (1931), Wine for These Grapes (1934), Conversation at Midnight (1937), Huntsman, What Quarry? (1939), Make Bright the Arrows (1940), The Murder of Lidice (1942),

Her Collected Sonnets appeared in 1941, Collected Lyrics in 1943, and Collected Poems in 1956. Her Letters where published posthumously, as well as Mine the Harvest (1954) a collection of 66 of her poems.

(Matt & Andrej Koymasky)