A Great Poetess Dies

In last October's issue we brought to the readers of this magazine a delicate piece by the great American poetess Edna St. Vincent Millay, entitled "His Memory." It never crossed our minds then, of course, that the hand of death would snatch this poetess from the earth in that very month, a few days after the issue appeared. The poetess died on October 19 of a heart attack, at the age of 58, in a small town in New York State in America.

Millay was born into a strait-laced family, and before her fourteenth year she began composing lyric verse in a free, novel style that aroused doubt and disapproval. When she reached twenty she published the first of the writings for which she afterwards became famous. In her twenty-fifth year she moved to New York, where she lived a life her contemporaries described as revolutionary, scandalous, and dissolute!

In 1923 she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, one of the most eminent literary prizes in the American land, and her verse spread far and wide among the literary classes and the people. Then she took up acting for a brief while, traveled to France, and became the foremost model for a great multitude of young women who longed to imitate her in her way of living, though they lacked the boldness such imitation required.

In that same year she married a businessman — one of a countless host who had aspired to her love and to marrying her. A few years afterwards she left New York for a small village, where she remained until her death. There she lived a quiet life, differing from her former life in every way.

Edna St. Vincent Millay is counted among the most eminent poetesses of the age, and among the loftiest writers America has ever produced. She left behind 16 volumes of verse, 6 plays, and several short stories. With her death, one of the loveliest literary faces in the entire world of women has been effaced.