{"product_id":"savage-beauty-isbn-9780375760815","title":"Savage Beauty","description":"\u003cb\u003eThirty years after the smashing success of \u003ci\u003eZelda\u003c\/i\u003e, Nancy Milford returns with a stunning  second act.  \u003ci\u003eSavage Beauty \u003c\/i\u003eis the portrait of a passionate, fearless woman who obsessed  American ever as she tormented herself.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eONE OF \u003ci\u003eESQUIRE\u003c\/i\u003e’S 50 BEST BIOGRAPHIES OF ALL TIME\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e If F. Scott Fitzgerald was the hero of the  Jazz Age, Edna St. Vincent Millay, as flamboyant in her love affairs as she was in  her art, was its heroine.  The first woman ever to win the Pulitzer Prize, Millay  was dazzling in the performance of herself.  Her voice was likened to an instrument  of seduction and her impact on crowds, and on men, was legendary. Yet beneath her  studied act, all was not well.  Milford calls her book \"a family romance\"—for the  love between the three Millay sisters and their mother was so deep as to be dangerous.   As a family, they were like real-life \u003ci\u003eLittle Women\u003c\/i\u003e, with a touch of \u003ci\u003eMommie Dearest\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Nancy Milford was given exclusive access to Millay's papers, and what she found  was an extraordinary treasure.  Boxes and boxes of letter flew back and forth among  the three sisters and their mother—and Millay kept the most intimate diary, one  whose ruthless honesty brings to mind Sylvia Plath.  Written with passion and flair,  \u003ci\u003eSavage Beauty\u003c\/i\u003e is an iconic portrait of a woman's life.“An incendiary cocktail of literary ambition, fame, sexual adventure and addiction.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNewsweek\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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.”\u003cbr\u003e—Kaye Gibbons, \u003ci\u003eThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Original and spellbinding.”\u003cbr\u003e—Lorrie Moore, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003cb\u003eSavage Beauty\u003c\/b\u003e is irresistible.”\u003cbr\u003e—Amanda Foreman\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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.’”\u003cbr\u003e—Toni Morrison \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Riveting and revealing...\u003cb\u003eSavage Beauty\u003c\/b\u003e sweeps before it all previous biographies of Millay, which by contrast seem uninformed and too discreet.”\u003cbr\u003e—J. D. McClatchy, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNacy Milford’s \u003ci\u003eZelda \u003c\/i\u003espent twenty-nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in hardcover, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and was translated into twelve languages. Nancy Milford was a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey in 1999, and an Annenberg Fellow at Brown Unviersity.  She has taught at the University of Michigan, at Vassar College, and will be in the American Studies Program at Princeton University this fall.  She is a founder of the Writers Room, has held a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is a Literary Lion at The New York Public Library. She lives in New York.PART ONE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTHIS DOUBLE LIFE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCamden, with its ring of mountains rising behind the white clapboard  houses facing Penobscot Bay, made the most of its view. Nowhere else  on the coast of Maine was there such dramatic natural beauty. The  houses were like weathered faces turned to watch the sea. The upland  meadows of ox-eyed daisies, timothy, and sweet fern, the dark green  woods of balsam and fir swept to the gentle summit of Mount  Megunticook, and the rock face of Mount Battie rose from the edge of  the sea as if to hold it. But it was a far less generous time than  the early days of shipbuilding, upon which the town's wealth had been  founded. Now even the great woodsheds along the wharves were mostly  abandoned, permanent reminders of the long death of shipbuilding. The  wool mills looming behind the town offered scant wages and long  hours. Later in her life Edna St. Vincent Millay would say she was \"a  girl who had lived all her life at the very tide-line of the sea,\"  but in the fall of 1904, she moved with her family into 100  Washington Street on the far edge of town, in a section called  Millville because it was near the mills. It was the smallest house in  the poorest part of town, but it was one their mother could afford  when she brought her girls to Camden after her divorce.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheir brown frame house was set in a large field, and just beyond it  flowed the Megunticook River, into which the mills sometimes spilled  their dyes. The house, on low ground, could be reached only by  walking down a long, rickety wooden sidewalk from the street. When  the Megunticook River overflowed and the weather turned cold with no  heat in the house, the kitchen floor flooded and froze and the girls  gleefully ice-skated across it. The house was close enough to their  mother's Aunt Clara Buzzell, a large, easygoing person who ran a  boardinghouse for the mill hands, that she could keep an eye on the  girls while their mother worked. Cora wrote to her daughters often;  the three little sisters felt her presence even when she was absent,  which was almost all the time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHave the baker leave whatever you want at Aunt Clara's. . . . I can  pay him when I see him and it will be all right. Have your washing  done every week now and have some system and regularity about your  work. . . . You can do it and you must do it . . . for Mama who has  her heart and hands full.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe told them to make up a song to sing while they did dishes, \"and  think 'I am doing this to please mama,' and see how easy the dishes  will get clean.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"We had one great advantage, I realized later,\" Norma Millay wrote.  \"We were free to love and appreciate our mother and to enjoy her  because she wasn't always around, as most mothers are, telling us  what to do and how to do it. . . . when mother was coming home, that  was an occasion to be celebrated, and we usually celebrated by  cleaning the house.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey invented games to make play out of work. \"Dishes were handled  differently,\" Norma remembered. \"This game was called 'Miss Lane' for  miscellaneous: here one of us washed, another dried, and the other  did miscellaneous pots and pans, milk bottles, whatever. Vincent was  mostly responsible for the songs we sang as we worked.\" This one was  written the first year they were in Camden:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI'm the Queen of the Dish-pan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  My subjects abound.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI can knock them about\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  And push them around,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd they answer with naught\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  But a clattering sound;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI'm the Queen of the Dish-pan,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e              Hooray!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  Cho.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor I've pots and pans\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  And kettles galore.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf I think I'm all done\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  There are always some more,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor here's a dozen\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  And there's a score.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI'm the Queen of the Dish-pan,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e              Hooray!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut they missed their mother and longed for her return. \"At night, sometimes, we would lie in bed together, huddled against the cold,  pretending to be brides, and little Kathleen would call out,  'Goodnight, Cherest!' in the direction we thought our mother would  be.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNot everyone in Camden agreed with the way the Millays lived. When  their neighbor Lena Dunbar came to visit, she was dismayed: \"For  instance, they had shades at their window and nothing else. I don't  think they cared much. Well, once they stenciled apple blossoms,  painted that pattern down the sides of the window. Or, for instance,  they had a couple of plum trees in their backyard and they never  waited for the plums to ripen, but would pick them green, put them in  vinegar, and call them 'mock olives.' Well, no one else did that sort  of thing in Camden, don't you see?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEmma Harrington, who taught eighth and ninth grades at the Elm Street  grammar school, where Vincent enrolled that fall, never forgot her.  \"She was small and frail for a twelve-year-old. . . . Her mane of red  hair and enormous gray-green eyes added to the impression of frailty,  and her stubborn mouth and chin made her seem austere, almost to the  point of grimness.\" She kept her after school after reading her first  composition to find out if someone had helped her with it. Tactfully,  she asked if her mother had seen her excellent work. Vincent  interrupted her: \"Excuse me, Miss Harrington, . . . but I can tell  that you think I didn't write that composition. Well, I did! But the  only way I can prove it will be to write the next one you assign  right here, in front of you. And I promise it will be as good as this  one, and maybe better.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was her determination to excel that drew attention. That first  winter, she clashed with the principal of the school. He was a good  teacher but quick-tempered. Vincent questioned him whenever something  he said puzzled her, and she was often puzzled. He felt she was  challenging his authority and began to mangle her first name. He  called her Violet, Veronica, Vivienne, Valerie, any name beginning  with a V but her own, which he considered outlandish. Unshaken,  Vincent would respond, \"Yes, Mr. Wilbur. But my name is Vincent.\" One  day he erupted during an exchange and shouted that she'd run the  school long enough. He grabbed a book from his desk and threw it at  her. She picked the book up carefully, took it to his desk, and  walked out of the classroom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat afternoon Mrs. Millay marched to the school and demanded an  explanation. Trying to conclude their heated interview, Wilbur pushed  her away from his door sharply enough that she nearly fell down the  stairs. Dusting herself off, Mrs. Millay strode into the office of  the superinten-dent of schools, who quickly agreed with her that  Vincent should not return to the Elm Street School. He transferred  her to Camden High School, midway in the first term. She was \"The  Newest Freshman,\" the title of her first composition to be published  in the school paper, The Megunticook, and the youngest. Though they  misspelled her last name-Milley-they would learn to correct it, for  by her senior year she was editor in chief.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"She was supposed to be a year behind, you know,\" Henry Pendleton,  who was in her class, said. \"But her mother had-well-she had a  downright fight with the principal of the school, and she took it  upon herself to put Vincent ahead. Yes, she did. Now the girls  associated with her more than the boys did. Their circumstances were  very poor. They were a very poor family. Oh, neatly dressed and all,  but their home looked . . . ah, well, they didn't have, let's say,  the things that most people in Camden enjoyed.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat began to disturb, even offend, the local worthies, was the way  Millay's mother treated Vincent. \"You see,\" Henry Pendleton recalled,  \"sometimes people felt a little . . . oh, well, for instance  father-my father was a farmer-and Mrs. Millay would be bragging about  her daughter, Vincent, and my father couldn't get a word in edgewise.  He had a daughter, too, you see, and he'd come home fuming. He said  to mother more than once, 'I would say my daughter is out-ranked!'  And people didn't like that.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVincent's birthday that year was noted by her mother as \"an  unpleasant day.\" As Cora totted up its costs, she said she'd paid  $30.00 for a set of books for Vincent and $3.00 for a subscription to  St. Nicholas, a children's magazine. She said there were\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1 cross little girl\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1 grieved little girl\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1 satisfied little girl\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1 tired and discouraged mama.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe satisfied little girl was Vincent. She wrote to St. Nicholas and  asked to join its League:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe have just been reading your interesting stories and poems and  Norma, Kathleen, and myself wish to join your League. We think you  are very kind to devote so much valuable time and space to your  readers. Norma was ten years old last December. Kathleen, seven last  May, and I shall be twelve Washington's birthday. Please send three  badges of membership to three very interested little sisters.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e-Vincent, Norma and Kathleen Millay\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat Millay called her first \"conscious writing of poetry\" was done  that year. \"Mother sent it to the St. Nicholas League and it received  honorable mention.\" Published in New York, St. Nicholas was a monthly  illustrated magazine for children. It was begun in the 1870s by Mary  Mapes Dodge, the author of a children's classic, Hans Brinker; or,  The Silver Skates, who was able to bring authors such as Mark Twain,  Rudyard Kipling, Christina Rossetti, Louisa May Alcott, Rebecca  Harding Davis, Lucy Larcom, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Jack  London-writers of distinction who might not ordinarily have written  for children-to young readers throughout the country. But what truly  distinguished the magazine was the St. Nicholas League, which each  month gave out not only prizes-badges in silver and gold, and  cash-but the gift of publication. St. Nicholas confirmed and gave  voice to a generation of young writers: Ringold W. Lardner, the Benét  children-Laura, William Rose, and Stephen Vincent-even the young  Scott Fitzgerald, who won a prize for a photograph.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"When I was fourteen,\" Millay wrote, \"I won the League's gold medal  for a poem, and there was an editorial commenting most flatteringly  on my work.\" The poem was called \"The Land of Romance,\" signed E.  Vincent Millay. The League addressed her as Master Millay until she  was eighteen, when she bothered to correct them. While the title and  length of the poem were assigned by the editor for its March 1907  competition, Millay made it the story of a child's quest to find  romance. The child (who always speaks as \"I\" and is never identified  as either a boy or a girl) first asks a man to show the way. The man,  described as thin, trembling, and uncertain, says he does not know  the way, then that he can't remember it. Next the child turns to a  woman, who does not respond at first but continues to work at her  spinning wheel, until impatiently:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Oh! Why do you seek for Romance? And why do you trouble me?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Little care I for your fancies. They will bring you no good,\" she said,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Take the wheel that stands in the corner, and get you to work, instead.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat is most interesting about the poem now is the difference between  the man's inability to give any direction or help at all and the  woman's fiercely practical advice: get to work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn the same page as the poem, the editor of the League cautioned  young writers, \"Very sad, very tragic, very romantic and very  abstruse work cannot often be used, no matter how good it may be from  the literary point of view, and while the League editor certainly  does not advocate the sacrifice of artistic impulse to market  suitability, he does advocate . . . the study of the market's needs.\"  It is hard to know how seriously E. Vincent Millay took any of this,  but she did correctly judge what was and was not suitable to the  needs of St. Nicholas, for by the time she was eighteen and too old  to enter their competitions anymore, she had won every prize they  gave.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The Land of Romance\" was considered good enough for Edward J.  Wheeler, the editor of Current Literature in New York, to select it  to reprint in his April issue. He said that although he couldn't tell  from the signature whether the author was a boy or a girl, \"the poem  seems to us to be phenomenal.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e~  ~  ~\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNorma remembered that publication in Current Literature confirmed  their belief that \"Vincent was a genius.\" Although each of the  sisters had sent things in to St. Nicholas, \"we never got a bite.  Vincent got everything.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e~  ~  ~\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVincent began her first diary in the spring of 1907, when the snow  was so deep it drifted over her knees. She was fifteen. She was  walking home in the evening from a Glee Club rehearsal when a man  called to her and, turning, she saw a sleigh drawing close to her  house. \"The sleigh was coming to take mama to Rockport on a  consumption case. How I hate to have her go! Have to keep house all  through vacation.\" Five days later, her mood had lifted considerably:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI am going to play Susie in Tris. . . . I have the stage all to  myself for a while and I have a love scene with the villain. The  villain is great.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTriss; or Beyond the Rockies was a melodrama in four acts, and  Vincent Millay was cast as Susie Smith, \"all learning and books.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy part is going to be great,-at least they all told me how well I  did. I am awfully glad for this will be my first appearance. I want  to make it a dazzling one. I get rather sick of having Ed Wells  forever hugging me while he is showing Mr. Keep how to do it. Mr.  Wells seems to understand the performance all right. He has evidently  had experience in that line.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe play went off without a hitch, or nearly. Everyone said that it  was the best home talent performance ever given in Camden, and some  even considered it better than the productions of the traveling  companies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy part isn't very large, but it is important and rather hard. I hope  we will get as good a house in Rockland as we did here. The Opera  House was crowded full and everything went off finely except when  Allie Eldredge lost his wig. Of course something had to happen. But  what of it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFour years later she stuck the following note in the margin of her  diary: \"I have just read through to this part and I wish to remark  that I consider myself at this point of my life an insufferable mutt  and a conceited slush head.\" By then she was nineteen and hard on  herself.New York Times bestseller; Author of Zelda [quote]--Newsweek","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303132516581,"sku":"NP9780375760815","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375760815.jpg?v=1767736128","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/savage-beauty-isbn-9780375760815","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}