Cora Millay Research Paper

Millay was born on February 22, 1892 in Rockland Maine. She was the daughter of Henry Tollman and Cora Buzzle. Cora Millay divorced her husband in 1990 due financial irresponsibility and moved Millay and her younger sisters to Camden Maine (Bio. A&E Television Networks). Millay’s mother had encouraged her daughters to value literature, which sparked Millay’s love for writing. Millay had originally wanted to be a concert pianist, but due to her small hands her piano instructor discouraged her from pursing the career (Bio. A&E Television Networks). So instead she pursued a career in writing. Millay attended public high school where she held the position of editor in chief of her school’s magazine (Bio. A&E Television Networks). Her first great poem was Renascence, was published in the anthology he Lyric Year in

A&E Television Networks). Influenced by fellow poet Robert Frost, Millay wrote sonnets with great skill and thoughtfulness. Her reputation grew, and she went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her fourth book, The Ballad of the Harp Weaver. Most notably, in this work she created the phrase, "My candle burns at both ends." In 1923 Millay married Dutch businessman Eugen Boissevain, who supported her feminist views. The couple later moved to a farm in Austerlitz, New York. In 1944 Millay suffered a nervous breakdown and was incapable of writing for two years (Gale, Robert L.). During this time and later, her husband catered to her so generously that he exhausted his own funds of strength and died in 1949 of lung cancer followed by surgery and a stroke (Gale, Robert L.). Millay, who with her husband had drunk to excess since the 1930s, clearly grew more reliant on on alcohol during her short-term, grief-stricken widowhood. Millay died sitting at the foot of her staircase alone, on October 19,