Get Free Shipping on orders over $89
Savage Beauty : The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay - Nancy Milford

Savage Beauty

The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

By: Nancy Milford

Paperback | 10 September 2002 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $39.99

$39.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $9.94 with

 or 

Ships in 5 to 10 business days

Thirty years after the smashing success of Zelda, Nancy Milford returns with a stunning second act. Savage Beauty is the portrait of a passionate, fearless woman who obsessed American ever as she tormented herself.

ONE OF ESQUIRE'S 50 BEST BIOGRAPHIES OF ALL TIME

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 Little Women, with a touch of Mommie Dearest.

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, Savage Beauty is an iconic portrait of a woman's life.
Industry Reviews
"An incendiary cocktail of literary ambition, fame, sexual adventure and addiction."
--Newsweek

"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."
--Kaye Gibbons, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Original and spellbinding."
--Lorrie Moore, The New York Review of Books

"Savage Beauty is irresistible."
--Amanda Foreman

"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.'"
--Toni Morrison

"Riveting and revealing...Savage Beauty sweeps before it all previous biographies of Millay, which by contrast seem uninformed and too discreet."
--J. D. McClatchy, The New York Times Book Review

More in Literary Biographies

Why Orwell Matters - Christopher Hitchens

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Memorial Days : Shortlisted for the 2026 Stella Prize - Geraldine Brooks
Enough Said : The Instant Number 1 Sunday Times Bestseller - Alan Bennett
Always Home, Always Homesick - Hannah Kent

RRP $36.99

$29.75

20%
OFF
Book of Lives : A Memoir of Sorts - Margaret Atwood

RRP $69.99

$52.75

25%
OFF
On Writing : A Memoir of the Craft - Stephen King

RRP $49.99

$38.75

22%
OFF
On Writing : A Memoir of the Craft - Stephen King

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
The Many Lives of Anne Frank : Jewish Lives - Ruth Franklin

RRP $26.95

$22.99

15%
OFF
Wifedom : Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life - Anna Funder

RRP $26.99

$20.75

23%
OFF
The Place of Tides - James Rebanks

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Walden : Macmillan Collector's Library - Henry David Thoreau

RRP $14.99

$14.75

Lady No - Kim Hyesoon

Hardcover

RRP $50.00

$49.75

James Joyce : A Political Life - Frank Callanan

RRP $79.99

$78.99

Travels with Charley : In Search of America - John Steinbeck

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Jane Austen at Home : A Biography - Lucy Worsley

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
How to End a Story : Diaries 1995-1998 - Helen Garner

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Shakespeare : Eminent Lives - Bill Bryson

RRP $19.99

$16.75

16%
OFF
How to End a Story : Collected Diaries 1978-1998 - Helen Garner

RRP $59.99

$40.99

32%
OFF
Memorial Days : Longlisted for the 2026 Stella Prize - Geraldine Brooks