In her lifetime, Edna St. Vincent Millay was not only or even primarily known as a producer of poetry. Instead, she was a celebrity and a cultural icon, with her poetry comprising one aspect of her reputation. Here, we'll briefly discuss Millay's life and poetry to understand why she achieved such a level of fame. We'll also explore how exactly her celebrity has influenced perceptions of her poetry. Furthermore, we'll delve into the idea of literary celebrity itself, exploring a few other writers and artists whose personalities and life stories have been as well known as—or better known than—their work.
Born in Maine in 1892, Millay rose to prominence at an early age. Having been published in magazines aimed at children, she contributed work to a 1912 anthology. Her first poems earned her notice from a number of prominent literary figures and caught the attention of an educator, Caroline Dow, who offered to pay for Millay's college education. She went on to attend Vassar College and then to take up residence in New York City, where she became part of a bohemian artistic scene centered in Greenwich Village. In a period when ideas about femininity were in turmoil, Millay came to represent the archetype of the new, liberated woman of the twentieth century. Her progressive political views were only one element of this liberation, with her personal life contributing a great deal to her reputation, even today. She had relationships with both men and women, and her bisexuality was seen as both glamorous and scandalous. Later in life, Millay developed substance abuse problems. Her addiction, like her sexuality, marked her as a figure of dangerous fascination. In many ways Millay's biography has overshadowed her work, perhaps in part because her interest in traditional poetic forms like the sonnet, despite the daring thematic content of her work, appeared somewhat conventional beside the formal experimentation of Millay's modernist peers.
Millay is far from the first or only writer whose literary reputation has been both strengthened and eclipsed by celebrity. Arguably, the Romantic poet Lord Byron was not only the first modern English literary celebrity, but the foundational figure of modern celebrity in general. Like Millay's fame, Byron's stemmed from a mixture of radical politics, unconventional lifestyle choices, and sexual exploits. These biographical elements worked in conjunction with the brooding, adventurous protagonists he portrayed, now known as Byronic heroes: these dramatic characters and their dramatic writer became cultural icons in concert. Well-known for both his good looks and his sharp wit, Byron became an early nineteenth-century sex symbol. Sensational rumors about his affairs circulated widely, often with help from Byron himself, who skillfully and consciously manipulated his own reputation and heightened his celebrity. Byron even inspired fad diets with his restrictive food habits, which included delicacies such as vinegar-soaked potatoes. The poet died in Greece, fighting for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire—a celebrated cause among political radicals of the period. The circumstances and suddenness of his death only contributed further to Byron's larger-than-life status.
At the other end of the nineteenth century, Oscar Wilde achieved a similar fame, with his style, wit, and sexuality driving his reputation alongside his novels, poems, and plays. Wilde was a face of the Aesthetic movement and an iconic dandy. His pursuit of aesthetic beauty and sensual pleasure earned him both admiration and ridicule, which he cultivated with as much skill and care as Byron had decades before. His homosexuality, meanwhile, resulted in Wilde being sent to prison under British anti-sodomy laws at the height of his fame. As much as his tumultuous life and carefully constructed, distinctively clothed persona contributed to his fame, his ironic wit served at least as important a role in his lasting fame. At times he directed this wit into literary criticism, which was often sharp and caustic in his hands. Today, while works like The Picture of Dorian Grey remain popular, so do pithy quotations attributed to Wilde—for instance, his supposed last words, "Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.”
Since at least the eighteenth century, readers and critics have been divided regarding the value of literary celebrity. Writers like Alexander Pope, in his 1715 work The Temple of Fame, distinguished the positive force of literary immortality from the negative force of frivolous celebrity. Certainly, the work of writers like Edna St. Vincent Millay has sometimes been undervalued or under-discussed, perhaps due to biographical details (and rumors) dominating their legacies. Yet at the same time, the work of many famous writers has been inextricable from their personalities and biographies. Byron and Wilde, who poured energy into crafting public personas, treated their own reputations with a type of technical mastery that echoed their literary works. For these writers, celebrity was perhaps not a distraction from literature, but an extension of it.
