Return to In the News & Press The acclaimed poet, a Vassar graduate, took inspiration from nature at the Hudson Valley home that is now being saved. By Reed Sparling   Described by one writer as the “Bob Dylan and Madonna of her generation,” poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) was partly responsible for promoting the “roar” in the Roaring Twenties, …

Return to In the News & Press The Millay Society is proud to announce that we have made significant progress toward protecting and preserving our 200-acre property for the future.  After working throughout 2022 with the New York State Land Trust, Scenic Hudson, we were honored that Steepletop was selected as one of four grant recipients in a new partnership, …

By Laura Mars // Photos by Jimmy ienner, Jr. // Historical Photos Courtesy Millay Society August 2022 Edition In the Berkshire border town of Austerlitz, New York, sits Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Steepletop, the former 635-acre blueberry farm purchased in 1925 by Millay—one of America’s most respected poets—and husband Eugen Jan Boissevain. Looking for a refuge from Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, …

Millay was born poor in Maine, and she achieved unprecedented renown as a poet. But it came with a cost. By Maggie Doherty May 9, 2022 It was at a party in Greenwich Village, in the spring of 1920, that the critic Edmund Wilson first encountered Edna St. Vincent Millay in the flesh. Wilson, a well-bred graduate of Princeton, was a …

Seven decades after Millay’s death, “Rapture and Melancholy” paints a picture of artistic triumph, romantic tumult and a daily life that descended into addiction. Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) was once the most famous poet in America. Her collections sold tens of thousands of copies, and her readings filled theaters from New York to Texas. She was the female voice …

The following guest post was written by Barbara Bair, curator of literature, culture and the arts in the Library’s Manuscript Division. The Library of Congress Manuscript Division is home to the personal papers of poet, playwright, librettist, and activist Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950). The collection includes correspondence, diaries and notebooks, writings, photographs, and other types of materials from Millay’s youth, family, and …

One hundred and thirty years ago today Edna St. Vincent Millay – a remarkable, sometimes scandalous, and always brilliant poet, was born in Rockland, Maine. Twenty-five years later she moved to Greenwich Village, where she and my grandfather Floyd Dell – a brilliant, sometimes scandalous, writer himself–fell in love. (At least this is how Floyd remembered it!) But when he …

Renowned Jazz Age poet Edna St. Vincent Millay graduated from Poughkeepsie’s Vassar College in 1917. Eight years later, Millay and her husband Eugen Jen Boissevain bought Steepletop, Millay’s beloved homestead in Austerlitz, Columbia County, which was turned into a museum celebrating the poet’s life in 2010, sixty years after her death. Now Edna’s life circles back to Vassar where she …

For the first time in history, and extensive collections of Millay’s treasures are on display at Vassar College where she graduated one hundred years ago. The student newspaper, Vassar Miscellaney News writes a wonderful article about the exhibition. It’s free and open to the public through June 2017. 

The 80th anniversary of the Sanibel-Edna St. Vincent Millay fire nearly slipped right past me. It was a hotel inferno that destroyed the only copy of one of Millay’s long verse poems and also a 17th century poetry collection written by an ancient Roman. But in a bit of fortuitous and downright serendipitous timing the book I’m reading now, “The Brazen Age,” …

Meryl Cates writes a very touching article for The Paris Review about discovering Millay as a young girl and discovering Steepletop, the Poet’s home, as a young woman. It was our personal pleasure to have Meryl working with us in the gardens at Steepletop this summer.

March, 2015. A wonderful story of Millay and Steepletop following an interview with Millay Society Literary Executor, Holly Peppe. If you’ve ever burned the candle at both ends, you know the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. You also know a bit about her life and times from what “critics termed a frivolous but widely known poem,” The New York Times said in …

The special benefit exhibition at McDaris Fine Art in Hudson, NY on Millay’s birthday, February 22, is featured in this issue of Rural Intelligence. The fundraiser helped to raise money for Steepletop’s preservation. On display were many rare photos and artifacts from the Millay Society collection, some never seen by the public before this event.

Poet, Gerad Malanga is given the Edna St. Vincent Millay Poet Of Distinction award at a reading of Malanga’s poetry, sponsored by the Millay Society at Steepletop. The event was held at McDaris Fine Art in Husdon, NY Saturday 1 March 2014

Millay and the exhibit BEOND THE POETRY:TREASURES FORM STEEPLETOP. The Edna St. Vincent Millay Society at Steepletop will debut a new exhibition of rare photos and personal treasures. The show opens with a fundraising reception on Millay’s birthday – that’s this Saturday, February 22 from 5:30-9:30 pm at McDaris Fine art in Hudson, NY.From 20 February, 2014

A Special Exhibition at McDaris Fine Art- Hudson NY  The Edna St. Vincent Millay Society at Steepletop, the poet’s historic estate in Austerlitz, NY, will debut a new exhibition of rare photos and personal treasures. The show opens with a fundraising reception on Millay’s birthday, Saturday, February 22, 2014, from 5:30-9:30 pm at McDaris Fine Art in Hudson, NY. A …

The house that Vincent Millay called home from 1923 through May, 1925 at 75 1/2 Bedford Street in New York has recently been sold. The house, reported to be the narrowest in New York City, was also home to Cary Grant and children’s writer Ann McGovern.

Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote of, and lived, the arc of celebrity. She captured the defiant gaiety of her generation, shaking off the war and moving into what would soon become the Jazz Age. And she prophesied her own trajectory. . .She understood right from the beginning that there would be foes: the disapprovers, the detractors, the people who would …

An article in the April 2013 edition of Martha Stewart Living Magazine by Gardening Senior Editor Melissa Ozawa is entitled “The Writer’s Garden.” It features five famous women authors: Eudora Welty, Elizabeth Lawrence, Anne Spencer, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Edith Wharton. Millay and her garden are featured on page 109.