Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
by By Milford, Nancy
Category: Biography & Autobiography , Literary Figures

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. 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.