Elinor Wylie

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Elinor Wylie
Elinor Wylie

Elinor Morton Wylie née Hoyt (September 7, 1885 – December 16, 1928) was an American poet and novelist who was popular before World War II.

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[edit] Family

Wylie was born in Somerville, New Jersey. Her grandfather, Henry M. Hoyt, was a governor of Pennsylvania; she was raised in this socially prominent family in Washington, D.C. Her aunt was Helen Hoyt, a minor poet.[1] In 1912, she graduated from the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland. She eloped with Philip Hichborn, and later eloped with Horace Wylie. She married three times and had a son by her first husband. Her last marriage (in 1923)[2] was to William Rose Benét, who was part of her literary circle.

[edit] Career

Talented in several arts, she was torn between painting and writing, but her position inside Washington literary circles, particularly with John Dos Passos and Edmund Wilson, encouraged her writing efforts. She wrote eight novels and several books of poetry. Her first book, Incidental Numbers (1912), was published privately in England. The first of her books to bring her recognition was her first official collection of poetry, Nets to Catch the Wind (1921).

Her other volumes of poetry include: Black Armour (1923), Trivial Breath (1928), Angels and Earthly Creatures(1929), and Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (1932). Wylie's literary interests are largely conservative and formal, as demonstrated by her preoccupation with the sonnet. Heavily influenced by 16th and 17th century English poetics, Wylie also shares the Romantics' infatuation with nature and fantasy.

Her last novel, Orphan Angel (1926) explores what Percy Bysshe Shelley's life would have been like if he had escaped his early death and moved to America.

[edit] Works

  • Angels and Earthly Creatures
  • Black Armour
  • Collected Poems
  • Collected Prose
  • Incidental numbers
  • Last Poems of Elinor Wylie
  • Mortal Image
  • Nets to Catch the Wind
  • Prophecy
  • Selected Works of Elinor Wylie
  • Trivial Breath

[edit] Novels

  • Jennifer Lorn: A Sedate Extravaganza (1923)
  • The Venetian Glass Nephew (1925)
  • The Orphan Angel (1926)
  • Mr. Hodge and Mr. Hazard (1928)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Taylor, Georgina (2001). H.D. and the Public Sphere of Modernist Women Writers 1913-1946: Talking Women. Oxford University Press, 76. ISBN ISBN 0198187130. 
  2. ^ New International Encyclopedia

[edit] External links