Savage Beauty The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay [Paperback]

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

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-lifeLittle Women, with a touch ofMommie 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 Beautyis an iconic portrait of a woman's life.“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 Beautyis irresistible.”
—Amanda Foreman

“One seldom sees this level of brilliant, hands-olcˆ