(1892-1950) was born in Rockland on February 22, 1892 and moved to Camden with her family when she was twelve, graduated from Camden High School, then from Vassar College.
Her mother, divorced, had little money for her three daughters, but encouraged reading and music in them. With no prospects of affording college, Edna read her new poem “Renascence”at a party at the Whitehall Inn in Camden. She so impressed a woman in attendance that she financed Edna’s education at Vassar.
Camden Harbor from Mount Battie
A plaque set in stone at the top of Mount Battie in Camden commemorates the writing of the poem, supposedly written while enjoying the view from the summit:
All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
Many of her poems contained romantic themes of love, death, youthful rebelliousness, and the cosmos. Later her works focused on the events of World War II.
In 1933, she and her husband bought Ragged Island, part of Harpswell, in Casco Bay. She enjoyed wide popularity, then suffered a nervous breakdown in the late 1940’s and died on October 19, 1950, in Austerlitz, New York.
Among her poems are “A few Figs from Thistles,” “The Ballard of the Harp-Weaver,” “Conversation at Midnight,” and “The Murder of Lidice,” about the destruction of a Czechoslovakian town by the Germans in World War II.
Additional resources
Most of Millay’s papers are at the New York Public Library, Yale University, and the Library of Congress.
Atkins, Elizabeth. Edna St. Vincent Millay and Her Times. Chicago, Ill. The University of Chicago Press., c1936.
Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Papers, 1912-1922. (Cataloger Note: The papers of a Maine poet and playwright. Included are four autograph letters from Edna St. Vincent Millary to Gladys Niles, dated 9 August 1912, October 1912, 6 January 1913, and 13 April 1913 (one without envelope); one autograph note from Edna St. Vincent Millary to Gladys Niles, undated; one typescript of her poem “Renascence” (5 typed pages); and one letter from C.B. Millay (Edna’s mother) to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dunton, dated 15 December 1922. Included also are photocopies of the letters and poem.) [University of Maine, Raymond H. Fogler Library, Special Collections]
Shafter, Toby. Edna St. Vincent Millay: America’s Best-loved Poet (February 22, 1892-October 19, 1950). New York. J. Messner. c1957.
Tibbetts, Joan. A Life in Camden: Joan Tibbetts’ Stories of Soldiers, Harpists & Edna St. Vincent Millay / an oral history based on interviews conducted July 16, 2003 by Donna Gold for the Camden Public Library. Stockton Springs, Me. Northern Light Press. 2005. [University of Maine, Raymond H. Fogler Library, Special Collections]