STARRED REVIEW
September 2002

The life of a legend

By Nancy Milford
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Author of Zelda, the best-selling biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, Milford delivers a fascinating account of the life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, the first female poet to win a Pulitzer Prize. Seductive, beautiful and undeniably brilliant, Millay born in 1892 in Camden, Maine attended Vassar with the backing of wealthy patrons, where she began a tumultuous series of love affairs with women and men. From her Greenwich Village home, she composed brave, lyric verse that the reading public couldn’t resist. During the Depression, her books sold in the tens of thousands, and her controversial personal life kept her in the public eye. Millay’s reliance on alcohol, morphine and men are recounted here in vivid detail. This is biography at its best a page-turning account of a remarkable writer.

A reading group guide is included in the book.

 

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Savage Beauty

Savage Beauty

By Nancy Milford
Random House
ISBN 9780375760815

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