's Best of 2001
Fans of Zelda, Nancy Milford's groundbreaking (and bestselling) biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald's tortured wife and muse, have been waiting impatiently since 1970 for Milford's promised follow-up about poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950). It's finally here, and they will not be disappointed. Milford's vivid narrative limns an electric personality with psychological acuity while capturing the freewheeling atmosphere of America in the turbulent years following World War I. After "Renascence" was published (when she was only 20) and she moved to Greenwich Village, Millay was the queen of bohemia, taking lovers with zest and voicing the reckless gaiety of a generation in her famous lyric, "My candle burns at both ends; / It will not last the night; / But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends-- / It gives a lovely light." With her flame-red hair, milk-white skin, and a voice that thrilled audiences (making her poetry readings a welcome source of income), Millay was the archetypal "new woman": powerful, passionate, and not to be ignored. But Milford makes it clear that her first loyalty was to her mother and sisters, and her deepest commitment to her writing. This juicy chronicle has famous names aplenty--critic Edmund Wilson and Masses editor Floyd Dell were among the men devastated by her refusal to be faithful--and lots of dissipation: Millay drank heavily and became addicted to morphine. It also takes a perceptive look at how an artist draws material from her life and at the strategies she uses to protect the wellsprings of creativity. Brief passages interspersed throughout delineating Milford's interactions with Norma Millay, the poet's younger sister and literary executor, might have been self-indulgent and self-aggrandizing; instead they offer intriguing snapshots of the complex process by which biography is made. The resulting book is a tour de force, and wildly entertaining as well. --Wendy Smith


From Publishers Weekly
Milford hit the New York Times bestseller list 30 years ago with her acclaimed biography of Zelda Fitzgerald; she now seems poised to do it again with this outstanding biography of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Like Fitzgerald, Millay (1892-1950) was a Jazz Age phenomenon, causing a sensation wherever she went; lines from her brief poem, "First Fig" ("I burn my candle at both ends/ It will not last the night... ") would become the rallying cry of a generation. She was notorious for her sexual unconventionality and (as Edmund Wilson put it) "her intoxicating effect on people... of all ages and both sexes." How a lyric poet could have achieved such celebrity is the conundrum at the heart of Savage Beauty. Millay, as Milford depicts her, was a troubled genius who used her prodigious gift to propel herself out of rural poverty and into the center of her age. She carefully cultivated the reporters and patrons who took the "fragile girl-child" under their wing. But her delicate image masked a force of nature whose incendiary wit and insatiable ambition took the public by storm. Milford deftly links the lyric intensity of Millay's work with her ravenous appetite for life. Whether tracing her ghoulishly close relationship to her mother and sisters, her years at the center of cosmopolitan life or her morphine addiction and untimely death, this account offers its readers a haunting drama of artistic fame. A true paradigm of literary biography, this finely crafted book is not to be missed. (Sept. 11) Forecast: Zelda, a finalist for the Pulitzer and the National Book Award, sold 1.4 million copies. In addition to a nine-city author tour and first serial publication in Vanity Fair, Mitford will be interviewed in the September issue of Harper's Bazaar. Expect lots of excellent reviews and return trips to the printer once the 75,000 initial run sells out. Along with this bio, Modern Library will issue a new edition of Millay's poetry, edited byCopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
In 1923, Edna St.Vincent Millay (1892-1950) became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for POETRY. To write her biography, Milford whose one other major publication is a highly praised and best-selling biography, Zelda persuaded Millay's younger sister and sole heir, Norma, to give her access to hundreds of Millay's personal papers, letters, and notebooks. Selecting from "this extraordinary collection," Milford meticulously integrates Millay's major poems, letters received and sent, reactions of friends, and comments from extensive interviews with Norma into an orderly and affecting narrative. The result is an intimate look at a complex, charismatic, imperfect woman, someone who evokes both admiration and sympathy. Among the less glamorous revelations are the sometimes damaging intertwining of the poet's life with that of her mother and two sisters, Millay's promiscuity and uncanny seductiveness, and the dynamics of her 27-year marriage to a man who adored and promoted her while enabling her infidelities and addictions. Milford's lengthy portrait is a testimonial to her scholarship, stamina, and commitment to her craft. This should serve as a model of a highly readable biography, as well as a standard source for future Millay studies. Recommended for all libraries.- Carol A. McAllister, Coll. of William & Mary Lib., Williamsburg, VA Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
*Starred Review* Millay scholars were frustrated for decades by the inaccessibility of a vast treasure trove of letters, journals, and other private papers jealously guarded by the poet's sister, Norma. Milford, the author of Zelda (1970), the best-selling biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, gradually earned Norma's trust during the 1970s and now presents the first comprehensive authorized biography of the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Red-headed, green-eyed, precocious, independent, and beguiling, Millay was born in Camden, Maine, in 1892, the eldest of three daughters of a divorced and renegade mother. Millay began writing as a girl, and her brilliant, original, and fearless early poems won her prizes and wealthy patrons who sent her to Vassar, where she conducted a great swirl of love affairs with young women and older men. Once established in Greenwich Village, the indefatigably lascivious Millay wrote daring yet lyric collections that sold in the tens of thousands at the height of the Depression. Milford is both meticulous and dynamic in her assessment of Millay's trailblazing work and complicated, controversial life right up to its sad and dramatic end, and she will continue her reclamation of a great American poet as editor of a forthcoming Modern Library edition of Millay's fire-and-diamond poetry. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Nancy Milford has done it again. One seldom sees this level of brilliant, hands-on research in contemporary literary biography. The result is this compelling, keenly perceptive life of Edna St. Vincent Milay -- with its own 'savage beauty.'" -- Toni Morrison

"SAVAGE BEAUTY is irresistible, Nancy Milford gives us not only the life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, but also her heart, her times, and the sparkling essence of her poetry."
-- Amanda Foreman

"Millay lives! And she casts a spell over the reader as mesmerizing as her poetry. Nancy Milford has done it again -- and ZELDA has met her equal."
-- Bill Moyers


Review
?An incendiary cocktail of literary ambition, fame, sexual adventure and addiction.?
?Newsweek

?Perfectly outstanding...Milford?s biography takes the whole of Millay?s heaving, grieving, ecstatic life into account in a way that is almost loving, always respectful, even when blunt truth and candor are necessary....Masterful.?
?Kaye Gibbons, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

?Original and spellbinding.?
?Lorrie Moore, The New York Review of Books

?Savage Beauty is irresistible.?
?Amanda Foreman

?One seldom sees this level of brilliant, hands-on research in contemporary literary biography. The result is this compelling, keenly perceptive life of Edna St. Vincent Millay?with its own ?savage beauty.??
?Toni Morrison

?Riveting and revealing...Savage Beauty sweeps before it all previous biographies of Millay, which by contrast seem uninformed and too discreet.?
?J. D. McClatchy, The New York Times Book Review

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Beautiful, talented, and driven, Edna St. Vincent Millay cast her potent sexual spell "on many, of all ages and both sexes," as lovestruck Edmund Wilson noted. Others, equally smitten, described her as "the girl poet of the New Bohemia" who "gave the Jazz Age its lyric voice." Nancy Milford's Savage Beauty presents an incandescent Edna who lived the legend, wrecked her health, and lost her beauty. In 1950, aged 58 -- her gifts far from exhausted -- she fell down an unlit staircase, breaking her neck.

Access to family papers enables Milford to tell a powerful story. Maternal sacrifice propelled Edna from a hardscrabble childhood in Camden, Maine, to Vassar College. Talent helped: "Renascence," the prize-winning semi-mystical poem she wrote at 20, gained her powerful friends among New York's social and literary lions. Converting their admiration into assistance, Millay ensured they promoted her career. Leaving Vassar tut-tutting about her partygoing, she moved on to electrify Greenwich Village -- progressing from books to beds. On one notable occasion, to reduce her numerous suitors' wait-time, she gave an intimate dinner for three. For dessert she offered John Bishop her upper half and Edmund Wilson the lower, giving "poetic license" new meaning.

Wilford skillfully handles the Millay family dynamics: Edna's formidable mother and sisters, Norma and Kathleen (the latter would later be a rival), shared her life and sometimes her home. This and the demands of Millay's travels, readings, and affairs caused her casually acquired but devoted husband, Eugen Boissevain, much pain. Millay's prolific output pleased public and critics alike: Her Ballad of the Harp-Weaver (1923) won her the first Pulitzer awarded to a women; her libretto for The King's Henchman (a successful Metropolitan Opera production) initially outsold The Sun Also Rises. Though not undertaking a critical evaluation of Millay's oeuvre, Milford quotes from it generously and perceptively. Certainly she will draw new readers to Millay and to her engaging poetry.(Peter Skinner)

Peter Skinner lives in New York City.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Thomas Hardy once said that America had two great attractions: the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. The most famous poet of the Jazz Age, Millay captivated the nation: She smoked in public, took many lovers (men and women, single and married), flouted convention sensationally, and became the embodiment of the New Woman.
Thirty years after her landmark biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, Nancy Milford returns with an iconic portrait of this passionate, fearless woman who obsessed America even as she tormented herself. Chosen by USA Today as one of the top ten books of the year, Savage Beauty is a triumph in the art of biography. Millay was an American original—one of those rare characters, like Sylvia Plath and Ernest Hemingway, whose lives were even more dramatic than their art.

SYNOPSIS

Thirty years after the smashing success of Zelda, Nancy Milford returns with a stunning second act. Savage Beauty is the portrait of a passionate, fearless woman who obsessed American ever as she tormented herself.

If F. Scott Fitzgerald was the hero of the Jazz Age, Edna St.

FROM THE CRITICS

Toni Morrison

Nancy Milford has done it again. One seldom sees this level of brilliant, hands-on research in contemporary literary biography. The result is this compelling, keenly perceptive life of Edna St. Vincent Milay—with its own 'savage beauty.'

Bill Moyers

Millay lives! And she casts a spell over the reader as mesmerizing as her poetry. Nancy Milford has done it again—and ZELDA has met her equal.

Amanda Foreman

Savage Beauty is irresistible, Nancy Milford gives us not only the life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, but also her heart, her times, and the sparkling essence of her poetry.

Library Journal

In 1923, Edna St.Vincent Millay (1892-1950) became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. To write her biography, Milford whose one other major publication is a highly praised and best-selling biography, Zelda persuaded Millay's younger sister and sole heir, Norma, to give her access to hundreds of Millay's personal papers, letters, and notebooks. Selecting from "this extraordinary collection," Milford meticulously integrates Millay's major poems, letters received and sent, reactions of friends, and comments from extensive interviews with Norma into an orderly and affecting narrative. The result is an intimate look at a complex, charismatic, imperfect woman, someone who evokes both admiration and sympathy. Among the less glamorous revelations are the sometimes damaging intertwining of the poet's life with that of her mother and two sisters, Millay's promiscuity and uncanny seductiveness, and the dynamics of her 27-year marriage to a man who adored and promoted her while enabling her infidelities and addictions. Milford's lengthy portrait is a testimonial to her scholarship, stamina, and commitment to her craft. This should serve as a model of a highly readable biography, as well as a standard source for future Millay studies. Recommended for all libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/01.] Carol A. McAllister, Coll. of William & Mary Lib., Williamsburg, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews