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Collection of 26 typewritten manuscripts of poems by renowned lyrical poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay, 28 total pages on 8.5 x 11 sheets, compiled by her mother, Cora Lounella Buzelle, and forwarded to Charles Hapgood, the son of writers Hutchins Hapgood and Neith Boyce, on September 24, 1920. Of the collection, three of the poems are signed at the bottom in fountain pen by the author, “Edna St. Vincent Millay.” These are: ‘Burial,’ ‘Doubt No More That Oberon’ [both published in 1920], and ‘The Wood Road’ [published in 1923]. The full list of unsigned poems includes:
‘Pastel’
‘The End of Summer’
‘Bereavement’
‘The Merry Spinner’
‘Progress’
‘The Poet’s Request’
‘A Blessing (To R. R.)’
‘The Two Loves’
‘To the Poison Ivy’
‘She Is Overheard Singing’ - 2 pages
‘The Pear Tree’
‘The Penitent’
‘Nocturne’
‘Wraith’ - 2 pages
‘The Little Hill’
‘That Which Is Love’s’
‘No Matter What I Say’
‘The Merry Maid’
‘Low-Tide’
‘To Kathleen’
‘Ebb’
‘To S. M. (If he should lie a-dying)’
[Untitled]
The following manuscripts are unpublished according to Yost's bibliography in Collected Poems (1956) and Collected Lyrics (1939): ‘Bereavement,’ ‘The Merry Spinner,’ ‘Progress,’ ‘The Poet's Request,’ and ‘A Blessing.’ Also included is an untitled poem beginning, “A poem is not a thing that grows.” The remaining manuscripts were later published: ‘That Which is Love’s’ (1919); ‘She is Overheard Singing,’ ‘The Penitent,’ ‘Nocturne’ [later titled ‘MacDougal Street’], ‘The Merry Maid,’ ‘To Kathleen,’ ‘To S. M., If he should lie a-dying’ (1920); ‘Wraith,’ ‘The Little Hill,’ ‘No Matter What I Say’ [later titled ‘Eel Grass’], ‘Low-Tide,’ ‘Ebb’ (1921); and ‘The Pear Tree’ (1956).
The collection features a few handwritten amendments: Millay changes the name of a poem from ‘Song’ to “Pastel,” and, in the poem ‘The End of Summer,’ Millay strikes through the word “calliopsis” and writes above, “Coreopsis.” Below, in the same poem, she pluralizes the word “appleseed” and adds a comma. ‘The End of Summer’ was published in The Melody of Earth, ca. 1920, and ‘Pastel,’ to the best of our knowledge, was unpublished. In overall fine condition, with some creases, paper loss, and rust stains from paperclips.
Accompanied by a typed letter from Millay’s mother, dated September 24, 1920, addressed from Truro, Massachusetts, and sent to Hapgood. It reads, in part: “I have looked up some of my daughter's typed poems and am now sending them to you. I have no doubt that had she been here she might have gotten for you a better collection, but I chose what I might from duplicate copies that were at hand. I hope that you will enjoy them and that they may be of help to you in the work you want to do. I am sure that you might get a lot of pleasure from her book Renascence and Other Poems, if you should find a copy, and she is to bring out a new volume this Autumn.” Includes the original mailing envelope.
Edna St. Vincent Millay graduated from Vassar in 1917, having already achieved widespread recognition with the publication of her first volume, Renascence and Other Poems. Her next collection, A Few Figs from Thistles (1920), helped establish her as one of the leading poetic voices of her generation. Dating from this same early period in Millay’s career, the present archive preserves a substantial group of her poems in manuscript form, including several that remain unpublished according to standard bibliographies. Groups of Millay manuscripts of this scale are seldom encountered, and the survival of more than two dozen poems—some with authorial revisions and three signed by the poet—offers a revealing glimpse into the working manuscripts of one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated American lyric poets.
