Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 195) – American poet and playwright

Edna was born on 22nd February 1892 in Rockland, Maine, United States of America.  Her parents were Henry Tolman Millay, a schoolteacher, and Cora Lounella Buzelle, a nurse.  Edna’s father became a school superintendent.

She was given the name St Vincent after the hospital in New York, where her uncle's life had been saved shortly before she was born. Edna had the following siblings: Norma Lounella (born 1893), and Kathleen Kalloch (born 1896).

Edna’s parents divorced and the girls’ mother moved with them to live near her aunt in Camden, Maine. Educated at Camden High School, Edna contributed to the school magazine”The Megunticook”.  When she was fourteen, Edna was awarded the St. Nicholas Gold Badge for poetry.  The following year, she had  poems published in the children's magazine “St. Nicholas”, the “Camden Herald” newspaper and in the anthology “Current Literature”. 

Edna went on to study at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, graduating in 1917.  During the First World War, she was a dedicated and active pacifist.  After graduation, Edna moved to live in Greenwich Village, New York. In 1923, Edna was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry – she was only the third woman to win the award.

Edna married Eugen Jan Boissevain (1880–1949) in 1923.  He was the widower of the lawyer and war correspondent Inez Milholland, who Edna had met at Vassar. A self-proclaimed feminist, Boissevain supported her career.

Edna died at her home on 19th October 1950. She was buried beside her husband at Steepletop, Austerlitz, New York.

“To Inez Milholland”

Upon this marble bust that is not I
Lay the round, formal wreath that is not fame,
But in the forum of my silenced cry
Root ye the living tree whose sap is flame.
I, that was proud and valiant, am no more: -
Save as a dream that wanders wide and late,
Save as a wind that rattles the stout door,
Troubling the ashes in the sheltered grate.
The stone will perish;  I shall be twice dust.
Only my standard on a taken hill
Can cheat the mildew and the red-brown rust
And make immortal my adventurous will,
Even now the silk is tugging at the staff:

Take up the song;  forget the epitaph.

Inez Milholland (1886 – 1916) was an American feminist activist and journalist. In 1913, she organised the March for Women’s Suffrage held in Washington, D.C., U.S.A.  Inez led the parade seated on a white horse.

During the First World War, Inez was an official war correspondent for a Canadian newspaper.  She was sent to the Italian Front, where she had access to the front lines.   Inez featured in one of the first exhibitions we held and features in the book of that exhibition – “No Woman’s Land: A Centenary Tribute to Inspirational Women of World War One”, which is available to purchase via Amazon.

The photograph of Inez Milholland on the white horse is from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital IDcph.3b24499.



Photograph of Edna St. Vincent Millay - photographer unknown.