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Edna St. Vincent Millay, "[I, being born a woman and distressed]"

BIOGRAPHY

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Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, American Memory site maintained by the Library of Congress.

[From The Norton Introduction to Literature]

(1892–1950)

Born in Rockland, Maine, Edna St. Vincent Millay published her first poem at twenty, her first poetry collection at twenty-five. After graduating from Vassar College, she moved to New York City's Greenwich Village, where, as she gained a reputation as a brilliant poet, she also became notorious for her bohemian life and her association with prominent artists, writers, and radicals. In 1923, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver; in 1925, growing weary of fame, she and her husband moved to Austerlitz, New York, where she lived for the rest of her life. Although her work fell out of favor with mid-twentieth century modernists, who rejected her formalism as old-fashioned, her poetry—witty, acerbic, and superbly crafted—has found many new admirers today.

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