QUICK FACTS
Born: February 22, 1892 · Rockland, Maine, USA
Died: October 19, 1950 · Austerlitz, New York, USA (aged 58)
Era: Modern era (early 20th century)
Occupation: Poet; playwright
Education: Vassar College
Known for: “First Fig”; the sonnets; the Pulitzer-winning The Harp-Weaver
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) was one of the most famous and beloved American poets of the twentieth century — a virtuoso of traditional forms, especially the sonnet, and a public symbol of the modern, independent “New Woman.” Her verse pairs classical craft with frank, fearless feeling about love, freedom, and mortality.
A celebrity in her own lifetime, Millay packed reading halls across the country and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923. Her quatrain “First Fig” — “My candle burns at both ends” — became the motto of a restless generation, and her sonnets remain among the finest love poems in English.
On This Page: Early Life and Education · Literary Career and Major Works · Style and Themes · Later Life and Legacy · Notable Poems · Frequently Asked Questions · Related Poets
Early Life and Education
Millay was born on February 22, 1892, in Rockland, Maine, the eldest of three daughters raised, after her parents’ separation, by a resourceful mother who prized books and music. She wrote poetry from childhood, and at twenty her poem “Renascence” — published in the 1912 anthology The Lyric Year — brought sudden national notice. A patron’s support sent her to Vassar College, where her wit and charisma made her a star; she graduated in 1917 and moved to Greenwich Village, plunging into its world of theater, activism, and bohemian freedom.
Literary Career and Major Works
Millay’s twenties were a whirlwind of fame. Her first book, Renascence and Other Poems (1917), announced a major new voice, and A Few Figs from Thistles (1920) made her notorious and beloved at once — witty, defiant, and frank about female desire and independence. The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, making her one of the first women to receive the honor. She wrote verse plays too, among them Aria da Capo (1919) and the opera libretto The King’s Henchman (1927), and through the 1920s and 1930s she toured the country giving electrifying public readings, as much a performer as a poet.
Style and Themes
Millay’s gift was to pour modern feeling into classic forms. She revitalized the sonnet, using its old discipline to explore love, freedom, mortality, and the war between passion and restraint, and her verse is prized for its musicality, its exact diction, and its unflinching emotional honesty. As a leading voice of the “New Woman,” she insisted that a woman’s poetry could be at once sensual and intellectual, defiant and exquisitely made. That example carried directly into the work of later confessional poets — Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich — who built on her candor.
Later Life and Legacy
Marriage and a country home anchored Millay’s later years. In 1923 she married Eugen Boissevain, who set aside his own career to support hers, and the couple settled at Steepletop, their farm in Austerlitz, New York. Her later collections — The Buck in the Snow (1928), the sonnet sequence Fatal Interview (1931), and Wine from These Grapes (1934) — show both personal strain and deepening maturity. Chronic pain from a car accident and the darkness of the war years took a toll, but she kept writing to the end. She died at Steepletop in 1950, at fifty-eight, leaving a body of work still loved for its passion, courage, and beauty.
Notable Poems
These are the Millay poems most worth starting with:
- First Fig: Her most quoted poem — four lines blazing with reckless vitality: “My candle burns at both ends.”
- Renascence: The early visionary poem that made her famous at twenty, moving from despair to spiritual rebirth.
- What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: A celebrated sonnet of remembered lovers and the loneliness of fading passion.
- Love Is Not All: A clear-eyed sonnet admitting love’s practical uselessness — then refusing, all the same, to trade it away.
- Recuerdo: A buoyant, tender lyric of a night spent riding the ferry back and forth, young and broke and happy.
- Dirge Without Music: A fierce elegy that refuses to be consoled about death — “I am not resigned.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers to the questions readers most often ask about Edna St. Vincent Millay.
What is Edna St. Vincent Millay best known for?
Her masterful sonnets and lyric poems about love and independence, the famous quatrain “First Fig” (“My candle burns at both ends”), and winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923.
Did Edna St. Vincent Millay win the Pulitzer Prize?
Yes. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 for The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems, becoming one of the first women to receive the award.
What is “First Fig” about?
A four-line poem celebrating living intensely and recklessly — burning the candle at both ends — even if such a life cannot last. It became a rallying cry for the free-spirited 1920s.
Was Millay a feminist?
She is widely seen as one. As a leading figure of the “New Woman,” she lived and wrote with bold independence, treating women’s desire, freedom, and creative ambition as serious poetic subjects.
What are the main themes in Millay’s poetry?
Love and desire, personal freedom and independence, the passage of time, mortality, and the tension between passion and self-control.
Related Poets
Readers who admire Millay often turn to these poets:
- Sara Teasdale: An older contemporary and friend whose musical love lyrics share Millay’s terrain.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning: The great Victorian forebear of the woman’s love sonnet, which Millay made modern.
- Sylvia Plath: A later confessional poet who extended Millay’s fearless emotional candor.
- Anne Sexton: Another confessional heir who built on Millay’s frankness about a woman’s inner life.
- Robert Frost: A contemporary American master of traditional form whose career ran alongside hers.