Edna St. Vincent Millay was a Pulitzer Prize winning American poet and playwright, almost as well known today for her love life as for her writing. Edna was an unconventional and independent person from childhood, when she insisted on calling herself “Vincentâ€. Although one of three daughters of a working, single mother, Edna was provided an education at Vassar by a sympathetic mentor. She plunged headfirst into the life of New York Bohemia, joining the Provincetown Players, writing, exploring early feminist ideals and conducting multiple affairs with both sexes. By 1923 she had won the Pulitzer and was in demand as a poet, her success at which would last her lifetime. She enjoyed a long, open and mostly happy marriage to a non-writer who enabled her to concentrate on what was essential to her, guarding her health and her space assiduously. If she did nothing else at all, she would always be remembered as the woman whose “…candle burns at both ends†and, indeed, it did give “a lovely lightâ€!
