Weaving intellect, emotion and irony into unexpected combinations, Edna St. Vincent Millay gave voice through her poetry to her post-World War I generation's claim to personal freedom -- and earned a reputation as a sexually liberated free-thinker who followed her own moral code. Known for her progressive convictions about women's rights and social equality, as well as her free-spirited Bohemian lifestyle, Millay surrounded herself in the 1920s with other artists and writers in Greenwich Village, including Eugene O'Neill, Floyd Dell, Djuna Barnes and Edmund Wilson. Her finely crafted poetry found its form mainly in traditional rhyming sonnets and lyric pieces, but her message declared her independence from convention, as in the often-quoted 1918 quatrain:
My candle burn's at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends --
It gives a lovely light!"
This edition comprises Millay's first three books, Renascence, Second April, and A Few Figs as well as a biographical and critical Introduction, and indexes both by title and by first line.
