Guide to the Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers, 1892-1988

Collection Summary

Biographical Note

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born February 22, 1892, in Rockland, ME. Her mother, Cora Lounella Buzzelle Millay, raised "Vincent" -- as she was known to family and close friends--and her younger sisters, Norma (b. 1893) and Kathleen (b. 1896), primarily on her own after a divorce from Millay's father, Henry Tolman Millay, in 1900. Millay's literary career began in 1906 when her poem, "Forest Trees," was accepted and published in St. Nicholas magazine. Millay became a regular contributor to St. Nicholas until she turned 18 and could no longer submit her works. In 1912, "Renascence" was accepted for publication in a poetry anthology, The Lyric Year. Millay was encouraged to continue her formal education and she entered Vassar College in September, 1913 at age twenty-one following a semester of preparatory study at Columbia University's Barnard College.

During her Vassar years, Millay wrote and appeared in several plays for Vassar College productions. She also wrote music and lyrics for Vassar events including "The Patient Periodical," that won the Class Song Contest in 1916, and the Class of 1917 Baccalaureate Hymn. Millay had little tolerance for the rules and regulations imposed on students at Vassar in those days. She was banned from participating in Commencement exercises because she had been caught staying out of town overnight, but a protest effort by friends--both student and faculty--managed to persuade the administration to permit her to attend the ceremonies. It was a disheartening end to a difficult four years, but Millay was pleased with her accomplishment of graduating from Vassar. Millay's first book of poetry, Renascence and Other Poems, was published by Mitchell Kennerley in December 1917. After finishing at Vassar, Millay moved to Greenwich Village and pursued writing and acting with the Provincetown Players, including performances of some of her own works. During this time, Millay also published a series of short stories in Ainslee's magazine under the pseudonym "Nancy Boyd" to supply income.

In 1923 Millay won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her "Ballad of the Harpweaver." That same year she married Eugen Jan Boissevain (1880-1949) who encouraged and supported Millay's creative and literary pursuits. Millay and Boissevain bought Steepletop, a farm near Austerlitz, NY, in 1925 and lived there for the remainder of their lives. Millay was an immensely popular poet selling over three quarters of a million copies of her books during her lifetime. Through the 1920s and 1930s she gave numerous public readings of her poetry, both in live appearances and radio broadcasts, which afforded her public recognition and critical acknowledgment. Millay involved herself in social and political issues throughout her career: feminism, the injustice of the Sacco and Vanzetti affair, and the issues of World War II all received the attention of her pen. In addition to her works of short lyric and sonnet poetry, Millay wrote several plays including The King's Henchman, one of the most recognized American operatic works of this century. Millay died of heart failure on 19 October 1950, at her home in Austerlitz, NY.

Scope and Content Note

The Millay Collection at the Vassar College Libraries Department of Special Collections is an artificial collection assembled from Vassar College administrative files, professor and instructor records, donations from friends and fellow Class of 1917 alumnae, and donations from admirers and associates of Millay. The researcher should be aware that there are no personal papers of Millay and few manuscript materials from Millay.

The strength of the Millay Collection is in documenting the time Millay spent at Vassar College, 1913-1917, and her activities during that period. Vassar College administrative files, official correspondence, academic records, student activities' materials, and professor records constitute the formal documentation for the Collection. These records are enhanced by papers from Professor Elizabeth Hazelton Haight. Elizabeth Hazelton Haight, professor of Latin and the Classics at Vassar from 1909-1942, first met Millay during the summer of 1913. She tutored Millay in Latin in preparation for the Vassar College entrance examinations, and the two remained close both personally as friends and formally as professor and student. Professor Haight's materials include research she compiled for two articles she wrote about Millay, "Vincent at Vassar" and "Vincent at Steepletop." Documentation of the relationship between Millay and Vassar is supplemented by materials donated by friends and classmates, most notably Charlotte Babcock Sills who was one of Millay's roommates and close friends at Vassar. The Collection also contains a number of photographs of Vassar College Productions of Millay's works and performances by Millay while at Vassar.

Millay's literary works are represented by letters and manuscript items from Mitchell Kennerley, Millay's first publisher (Renascence and Other Poems), and Walter Adolphe Roberts, editor of Ainslee's magazine. In addition, several radio broadcast scripts and letters from the files of Margaret Cuthbert document Millay's poetry readings and public response.

Papers from Margaret Cuthbert and Alice Blinn contain information about Millay's career and personal affairs. It is not clear how or when these two women met Millay and Eugen Boissevain, but correspondence with "Aunt Edna" and "Uncle Ugin" spans a twenty-six year period, from 1924 to 1950. Margaret Cuthbert was on staff at NBC Radio, New York during the period when Millay did several broadcasts with NBC. Alice Blinn was an editor at Ladies' Home Journal, and involved Ladies' Home Journal in a project to renovate the kitchen at Steepletop for an article published in 1947. Records from this venture, includes photographs of the project and are in the Collection. Millay's childhood and early life is also documented in photographs and letters containing reminiscences from Millay's "Auntie Kem," Clementine Parsons, to Margaret Cuthbert and Alice Blinn, and Elizabeth Hazelton Haight.

Contents note: "Clippings" files contain items cut from all types of sources-- newspapers, journals, magazines, newsletters, etc. All sorts of items are clipped including articles, announcements of readings, publication ads, articles about family members and friends, publication reviews, announcements of honorary degrees, announcements of stage productions, film negotiations, obituaries, literary awards and affairs, drawings, etc. Some files also contain full issues of magazines with articles about Millay. A large cache of published material was transferred from the Archive's Alumnae Collection in 2005. The bulk of that material is now included in the "Contributions to Periodicals" section of Series IV, but there were also additions to the clippings in Series VII, and the "Musical Adaptations" section of Series VIII.

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Encoded by Elizabeth Clarke, April 2007. Last updated by Emma Gronbeck, September 2024.

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