Best known for her poetic chronicles of the Jazz Age of the 1920s, Millay's work opened a range of new subject matter to women authors. Her writings also helped popularize a new, more liberated way of life for women in the 1920s and 1930s. Though Millay's content was considered radical for its time, the style of most of her poetry is formal, employing traditional meter and rhyme schemes. She has frequently been deemed one of the most accomplished sonneteers of the twentieth century. Several critics have asserted that Millay's devotion to traditional forms, combined with her move to more philosophical and political subjects in her later verse prompted her work to fall from favor in the mid-twentieth century, but increasing attention has been focused on her poetry in recent decades, particularly by feminist critics.

Biographical Information

Millay was born in Rockland, Maine. At the age of eight, her...