"Thou Art Not Lovelier Than Lilacs"
             Born in Rockland, Maine in 1892, Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of three sisters, and had been gifted with the talent to write. When growing up she was an avid reader of St. Nicholas magazine, and it was through that magazine that Millay first found her welcome as a poet (Perkins, 708). At the age of nineteen, Millay had written what is considered her first major poem, "Renascence." It was this piece of writing that won her a scholarship to Vassar College, and it was there that Millay refined her natural skills and provided her with a significant source of culture and scholarly wisdom, including much of the feminist and political sensibilities that surfaced in her later work (Napierkowski, 79). In 1917, the year Millay graduated from Vassar, her first book, Renascence and Other Poems was published. Upon graduation she packed up her things and went to Greenwich Village, New York (Perkins, 708). This area was noted as a haven for people of artistic skills as well as a center for issues of women's rights and free love (both of which Millay espoused) (Napierkowski, 79). While in Greenwich Village, she kept herself busy with writing poetry and performing with the Provincetown Players. However, she led a busy and fast paced life, and Millay eventually could not take it anymore, and with that, she left for Europe and stayed there for two years where she made her income by writing articles under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd (Napierkowski, 79). By 1923, Millay had returned to New York once again, and ended up meeting a man by the name of Eugen Boissevain. Within the same year Millay and Boissevain were married. Boissevain was Millay's ideological and spiritual partner and the two were perfect for each other. Not only did Millay get married in 1923, she also won the Pulitzer Prize and was granted an honorary degree from Tufts University in 1925 (Napierkowski, 79...