In 1943, Millay was the sixth person and the second woman to be awarded the Frost Medal for her lifetime contribution to American poetry.

Her parents were Cora Lounella Buzelle, a custom hair stylist and training nurse for private families, and Henry Tolman Millay, a life insurance agent and teacher who would later become a superintendent of schools.

Her middle name derives from St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City, where her uncle's life had been saved from an accident at sea just before her birth.

[3] Encouraged to read the classics at home, she was too rebellious to make a success of formal education, but she won poetry prizes from an early age.

The family settled in a small house on the property of Cora's aunt in Camden, Maine, where Millay would write the first of the poems that would bring her literary fame.

The family's house in Camden was "between the mountains and the sea where baskets of apples and drying herbs on the porch mingled their scents with those of the neighboring pine woods.

The backer of the contest, Ferdinand P. Earle, chose Millay as the winner after sorting through thousands of entries, reading only two lines apiece.

Earle sent a letter informing Millay of her win before consulting with the other judges, who had previously and separately agreed on a criterion for a winner to winnow down the massive flood of entrants.

Because the three winners were men, some people felt that sexism and classism were a factor in Millay's poem coming in fourth place.

Before she attended college, Millay had a liberal home life that included smoking, drinking, playing gin rummy, and flirting with men.

[14][15] At the end of her senior year in 1917, the faculty voted to suspend Millay indefinitely; however, in response to a petition by her peers, she was allowed to graduate.

She resided in a number of places, including a house owned by the Cherry Lane Theatre[19] and 75½ Bedford Street, renowned for being the narrowest[20][21] in New York City.

[16] The critic Floyd Dell wrote that Millay was "a frivolous young woman, with a brand-new pair of dancing slippers and a mouth like a valentine.

In 1919, she wrote the anti-war play Aria da Capo, which starred her sister Norma Millay at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York City.

She secured a marriage license but instead returned to New England where her mother Cora helped induce an abortion with alkanet, as recommended in her old copy of Culpeper's Complete Herbal.

Boissevain was the widower of labor lawyer and war correspondent Inez Milholland, a political icon Millay had met during her time at Vassar.

For Millay, one such significant relationship was with the poet George Dillon, a student 14 years her junior, whom she met in 1928 at one of her readings at the University of Chicago.

"[41][6] In August 1927, Millay, along with a number of other writers, was arrested while protesting the impending executions of the Italian American anarchist duo Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

Her failure to prevent the executions would be a catalyst for her politicization in her later works, beginning with the poem "Justice Denied In Massachusetts" about the case.

Everything was destroyed, including the only copy of Millay's long verse poem, Conversation at Midnight, and a 1600s poetry collection written by the Roman poet Catullus of the first century BC.

Merle Rubin noted, "She seems to have caught more flak from the literary critics for supporting democracy than Ezra Pound did for championing fascism.

Nazi forces had razed Lidice, slaughtered its male inhabitants and scattered its surviving residents in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.

[48][49] Millay was critical of capitalism and sympathetic to socialist ideals, which she labeled as "of a free and equal society", but she did not identify as a communist.

"[51]: 166 Despite the excellent sales of her books in the 1930s, her declining reputation, constant medical bills, and frequent demands from her mentally ill sister Kathleen meant that for most of her last years, Millay was in debt to her own publisher.

[52] Author Daniel Mark Epstein also concludes from her correspondence that Millay developed a passion for thoroughbred horse-racing, and spent much of her income investing in a racing stable of which she had quietly become an owner.

[5] Although her work and reputation declined during the war years, possibly due to a morphine addiction she acquired following her accident,[15] she subsequently sought treatment for it and was successfully rehabilitated.

The title sonnet recalls her career:[54] Those hours when happy hours were my estate, — Entailed, as proper, for the next in line, Yet mine the harvest, and the title mine — Those acres, fertile, and the furrows straight, From which the lark would rise — all of my late Enchantments, still, in brilliant colours, shine, Millay died at her home on October 19, 1950, at age 58.

It has the first couplets of "Renascence" inscribed along the perimeter of a large skylight: "All I could see from where I stood / Was three long mountains and a wood; / I turned and looked another way, / And saw three islands in a bay.

"[74] The library's Walsh History Center collection contains the scrapbooks created by Millay's high-school friend, Corinne Sawyer, as well as photos, letters, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera.

[75] Millay has been referenced in popular culture, and her work has been the inspiration for music and drama: My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light!