October 23, 1998
Contact:
Press Contact: Helen Dalrymple (202) 707-1940
Library of Congress Acquires Large Collection of Edna St. Vincent Millay Manuscripts
The Library of Congress has recently acquired an
extensive collection of manuscripts of poet Edna St. Vincent
Millay (1892-1950) that will add more than 20,000 new items
to its existing Millay materials housed in the Manuscript
Division. The new materials will be available for research
as soon as they have been processed and prepared for use.
"I have always admired Edna St. Vincent Millay," said
James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress. "I spent some
time as a youngster with my family on the coast of Maine not
far from where she was well known as a legendary figure.
I am very pleased that we have been able to expand the
Library's Millay holdings through the acquisition of this
significant collection of her manuscripts."
The Library will purchase the collection over a four-
year period from the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society, in a
private sale negotiated by Sotheby's, using a mix of public
and private funds. In August, most of the materials were
transferred to the Library from Sotheby's in New York where
they had been stored for several years. In September, the
literary executors and trustees added to the Library's
collection the relevant papers remaining at Steepletop, Ms.
Millay's home in Austerlitz, N.Y.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was well known to the American
public during the first half of this century. By 1920,
after the publication of Renascence and Other Poems, A Few
Figs From Thistles, and a one-act play Aria da Capo, she
became known as the voice of her generation - full of
freshness and gaiety tempered by social rebellion. She gave
theatrical readings of her poems, many of which were
published in popular and literary magazines. She was one of
the first poets to recite her poetry and fill a hall,
according to her sister Norma Millay Ellis. In Greenwich
Village, Millay was part of an artistic circle that included
Edmund Wilson, Floyd Dell, Max Eastman, and Witter Bynner,
among others. In 1923, she became the second person to
receive the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Millay and her sisters were raised on the coast of
Maine, where they overcame the limitations of their family's
poverty by pursuing creative projects such as writing poems,
songs and plays and listening to music. In 1912, Millay
gained her first public recognition with the publication of
her long poem, "Renascence." Soon after, she attracted the
attention of Caroline B. Dow, head of the YWCA Training
School in New York, who helped raise funds for her education
at Vassar.
In 1923, Millay married Eugen Boissevain, a Dutch
importer, and soon after they purchased Steepletop, where
she lived for the rest of her life. In 1927, she joined in
the protest against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti and
was arrested in Boston. In the mid-1930s, a nerve injury
left Millay in constant pain and she sought relative
seclusion with her husband at Steepletop. He died in 1949,
followed by Millay in 1950. Millay's published work
includes six plays,11 original volumes of poetry, and
fiction under the name of Nancy Boyd.
After the poet's death, her sister Norma began giving
Millay manuscripts to the Library of Congress. Those items
- eventually totaling 625 - include poetry and play
holographs, typescripts and galleys, and unpublished diary-
notebooks. The original manuscript of "Renascence," as well
as versions of many of her sonnets, are part of this
collection. A number of the Millay diary-notebooks,
including early drafts of poems and prose as well as other
materials left in deposit status at the death of Norma
Ellis, are covered by the 1998 acquisition contract.
Norma Millay Ellis lived at Steepletop after her
sister's death. She was an actress who as a young woman
played the lead in Millay's Aria da Capo and married its set
designer, the painter Charles Ellis. When Norma died in
1986, she left the remaining Millay papers at Steepletop to
the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society, whose board of trustees
had long wished to add this major lot to those papers
already in the Library of Congress.
The new materials include the remainder of the
unpublished diaries and notebooks, other segments of the
poetry manuscripts already in the Library, and original,
unpublished correspondence from such friends and associates
as Witter Bynner, Louis Untermeyer, Sara Teasdale, Georgia
O'Keeffe, Edmund Wilson, John Peale Bishop, Deems Taylor,
Edgar Lee Masters, Van Wyck Brooks, Maxwell Anderson, Upton
Sinclair, Vita Sackville-West and Willa Cather. Also
included are original materials of sociopolitical interest
such as the manuscript of a Millay essay on Sacco and
Vanzetti and her handwritten comments on a statement by the
Committee for Cultural Freedom.
The additions are extremely rich in Millay family
papers. They also include other Millay manuscripts and
typescripts, such as drafts of her libretto The King's
Henchmen, photographs, newspaper clippings and printed
reviews, broadsides, original music, recordings and radio
scripts, financial records, and first editions of her books.
When the entire collection is arranged, it will
comprise the most extensive set of primary materials for
research into Millay's life and work and her circle of
friends and acquaintances, as well as valuable information
about women's history, musical adaptation and related
subjects dealing with American cultural history during the
first half of the 20th century.
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PR 98-127
10/23/98
ISSN 0731-3527