{"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026view=compact","prev":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=8\u0026view=compact","next":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=10\u0026view=compact","last":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=13\u0026view=compact"},"meta":{"pages":{"current_page":9,"next_page":10,"prev_page":8,"total_pages":13,"limit_value":10,"offset_value":80,"total_count":129,"first_page?":false,"last_page?":false}},"data":[{"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c134","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday, \" n.d.","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c134#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003e#8287-c \u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c134#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02_c134","ref_ssm":["viu_viu03944_c02_c134"],"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c134","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_ids_ssim":["viu_viu03944","viu_viu03944_c02"],"title_filing_ssi":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday,\" n.d.","title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday, \" n.d."],"title_tesim":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday, \" n.d."],"normalized_title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday, \" n.d."],"text":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday, \" n.d.","Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence","TL, 1 p. on 1 l.","box-folder 2:66","William Rose Benét","#8287-c"],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[2],"sort_isi":152,"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"physdesc_tesim":["TL, 1 p. on 1 l."],"containers_ssim":["box-folder 2:66"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["There are no restrictions."],"parent_access_terms_tesm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"names_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e\n              \u003cnum\u003e#8287-c\n\u003c/num\u003e\n            \u003c/p\u003e\n          "],"scopecontent_tesim":["#8287-c"],"_nest_path_":"/components#1/components#133","timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"viu_viu03944","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/uva-sc/viu03944.xml","title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"text":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","8287, etc.","This collection consists of \n166 items.","There are no restrictions.","The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.","Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.","Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.","The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.","See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.","William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's","English"],"collection_title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"level_ssm":["collection"],"level_ssim":["Collection"],"unitid_ssm":["8287, etc."],"unitid_tesim":["8287, etc."],"repository_ssm":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"creator_persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"creators_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"access_terms_ssm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"acqinfo_ssim":["8287: Deposit: June 16, 1966; Gift, July 1, 1991. 8287-a: Purchase: \nJanuary 26, 1968. 8287-b: Deposit, January 11, 1971; Gift, July 1, \n1991. 8287-c: Purchase, June 7, 1978. 8287-d: Deposit: June 12, 1978; \nGift,\nJuly 1, 1991."],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"physdesc_tesim":["This collection consists of \n166 items."],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThere are no restrictions.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Access Restrictions"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["There are no restrictions."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eElinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers\u003c/title\u003e\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian\nGlass Nephew\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1925); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eElinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Simon \n\u0026amp; Schuster, 1926); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1926) \n\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets\u003c/title\u003e \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly\nCreatures\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eCollected Poems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1932); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eLast\nPoems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1943)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eAs a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eShe left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eHorace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers,\u003c/title\u003e none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhen Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThis Hand\u003c/title\u003e (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFriends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003ePoetry,\u003c/title\u003e hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eAtavism,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eFire and\nSleet and Candlelight,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eSilver Filigree,\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eVelvet Shoes,\u003c/title\u003e which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOne of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn,\u003c/title\u003e in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eDuring the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eVanity Fair.\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian Glass\nNephew,\u003c/title\u003e deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eJewelled Bindings,\u003c/title\u003e written in 1923\nwhile she was composing \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour,\u003c/title\u003e is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003ePortrait in Black\nPaint,\u003c/title\u003e she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (1926) and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Puritan's Ballad.\u003c/title\u003e Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eBy late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhile arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical/Historical Information"],"bioghist_tesim":["Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003ePapers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"prefercite_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va."],"processinfo_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eVirtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n        ","\u003cp\u003eMr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"processinfo_heading_ssm":["Processing Information"],"processinfo_tesim":["Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide."],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe majority of the letters were written to \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOther correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Content"],"scopecontent_tesim":["The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman."],"userestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eSee the \n            \u003cextref type=\"simple\" href=\"https://www.library.virginia.edu/policies/use-of-materials\"\u003e\n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.\u003c/extref\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"userestrict_heading_ssm":["Use Restrictions"],"userestrict_tesim":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"names_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"language_ssim":["English"],"total_component_count_is":159,"online_item_count_is":0,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c134"}},{"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c70","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Sunday\" [1922 Summer]","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c70#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003e\"regarding Rhode Island divorce from Horace Wylie which she eventually filed for September, 1922, and was later questioned, legally\" [Stanley Olsen] #8287-c \u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c70#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02_c70","ref_ssm":["viu_viu03944_c02_c70"],"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c70","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_ids_ssim":["viu_viu03944","viu_viu03944_c02"],"title_filing_ssi":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Sunday\" [1922 Summer]","title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Sunday\" [1922 Summer]"],"title_tesim":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Sunday\" [1922 Summer]"],"normalized_title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Sunday\" [1922 Summer]"],"text":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Sunday\" [1922 Summer]","Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence","TL, 3 pp. on 3 l.","box-folder 2:2","William Rose Benét","\"regarding Rhode Island divorce from Horace Wylie which she \neventually filed for September, 1922, and was later questioned, legally\" \n[Stanley Olsen]\n#8287-c"],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[2],"sort_isi":88,"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"physdesc_tesim":["TL, 3 pp. on 3 l."],"containers_ssim":["box-folder 2:2"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["There are no restrictions."],"parent_access_terms_tesm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"names_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e\"regarding Rhode Island divorce from Horace Wylie which she \neventually filed for September, 1922, and was later questioned, legally\" \n[Stanley Olsen]\n\u003cnum\u003e#8287-c\n\u003c/num\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n          "],"scopecontent_tesim":["\"regarding Rhode Island divorce from Horace Wylie which she \neventually filed for September, 1922, and was later questioned, legally\" \n[Stanley Olsen]\n#8287-c"],"_nest_path_":"/components#1/components#69","timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"viu_viu03944","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/uva-sc/viu03944.xml","title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"text":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","8287, etc.","This collection consists of \n166 items.","There are no restrictions.","The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.","Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.","Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.","The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.","See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.","William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's","English"],"collection_title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"level_ssm":["collection"],"level_ssim":["Collection"],"unitid_ssm":["8287, etc."],"unitid_tesim":["8287, etc."],"repository_ssm":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"creator_persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"creators_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"access_terms_ssm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"acqinfo_ssim":["8287: Deposit: June 16, 1966; Gift, July 1, 1991. 8287-a: Purchase: \nJanuary 26, 1968. 8287-b: Deposit, January 11, 1971; Gift, July 1, \n1991. 8287-c: Purchase, June 7, 1978. 8287-d: Deposit: June 12, 1978; \nGift,\nJuly 1, 1991."],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"physdesc_tesim":["This collection consists of \n166 items."],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThere are no restrictions.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Access Restrictions"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["There are no restrictions."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eElinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers\u003c/title\u003e\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian\nGlass Nephew\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1925); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eElinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Simon \n\u0026amp; Schuster, 1926); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1926) \n\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets\u003c/title\u003e \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly\nCreatures\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eCollected Poems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1932); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eLast\nPoems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1943)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eAs a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eShe left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eHorace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers,\u003c/title\u003e none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhen Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThis Hand\u003c/title\u003e (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFriends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003ePoetry,\u003c/title\u003e hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eAtavism,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eFire and\nSleet and Candlelight,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eSilver Filigree,\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eVelvet Shoes,\u003c/title\u003e which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOne of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn,\u003c/title\u003e in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eDuring the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eVanity Fair.\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian Glass\nNephew,\u003c/title\u003e deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eJewelled Bindings,\u003c/title\u003e written in 1923\nwhile she was composing \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour,\u003c/title\u003e is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003ePortrait in Black\nPaint,\u003c/title\u003e she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (1926) and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Puritan's Ballad.\u003c/title\u003e Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eBy late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhile arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical/Historical Information"],"bioghist_tesim":["Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003ePapers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"prefercite_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va."],"processinfo_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eVirtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n        ","\u003cp\u003eMr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"processinfo_heading_ssm":["Processing Information"],"processinfo_tesim":["Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide."],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe majority of the letters were written to \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOther correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Content"],"scopecontent_tesim":["The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman."],"userestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eSee the \n            \u003cextref type=\"simple\" href=\"https://www.library.virginia.edu/policies/use-of-materials\"\u003e\n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.\u003c/extref\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"userestrict_heading_ssm":["Use Restrictions"],"userestrict_tesim":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"names_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"language_ssim":["English"],"total_component_count_is":159,"online_item_count_is":0,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c70"}},{"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c88","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Sunday\" [1923 January ?]","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c88#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003eOn \u003cem type=\"simple\"\u003eVanity Fair \u003c/em\u003e letterhead; includes transcription by Stanley Olson. #8287-c \u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c88#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02_c88","ref_ssm":["viu_viu03944_c02_c88"],"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c88","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_ids_ssim":["viu_viu03944","viu_viu03944_c02"],"title_filing_ssi":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Sunday\" [1923 January ?]","title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Sunday\" [1923 January ?]"],"title_tesim":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Sunday\" [1923 January ?]"],"normalized_title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Sunday\" [1923 January ?]"],"text":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Sunday\" [1923 January ?]","Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence","ALS, 5 pp. on 5 l.","box-folder 2:20","William Rose Benét","On\nVanity Fair\n letterhead; includes transcription by Stanley Olson.\n#8287-c"],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[2],"sort_isi":106,"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"physdesc_tesim":["ALS, 5 pp. on 5 l."],"containers_ssim":["box-folder 2:20"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["There are no restrictions."],"parent_access_terms_tesm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"names_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eOn\n\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eVanity Fair\n\u003c/title\u003e letterhead; includes transcription by Stanley Olson.\n\u003cnum\u003e#8287-c\n\u003c/num\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n          "],"scopecontent_tesim":["On\nVanity Fair\n letterhead; includes transcription by Stanley Olson.\n#8287-c"],"_nest_path_":"/components#1/components#87","timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"viu_viu03944","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/uva-sc/viu03944.xml","title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"text":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","8287, etc.","This collection consists of \n166 items.","There are no restrictions.","The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.","Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.","Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.","The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.","See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.","William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's","English"],"collection_title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"level_ssm":["collection"],"level_ssim":["Collection"],"unitid_ssm":["8287, etc."],"unitid_tesim":["8287, etc."],"repository_ssm":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"creator_persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"creators_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"access_terms_ssm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"acqinfo_ssim":["8287: Deposit: June 16, 1966; Gift, July 1, 1991. 8287-a: Purchase: \nJanuary 26, 1968. 8287-b: Deposit, January 11, 1971; Gift, July 1, \n1991. 8287-c: Purchase, June 7, 1978. 8287-d: Deposit: June 12, 1978; \nGift,\nJuly 1, 1991."],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"physdesc_tesim":["This collection consists of \n166 items."],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThere are no restrictions.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Access Restrictions"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["There are no restrictions."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eElinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers\u003c/title\u003e\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian\nGlass Nephew\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1925); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eElinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Simon \n\u0026amp; Schuster, 1926); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1926) \n\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets\u003c/title\u003e \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly\nCreatures\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eCollected Poems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1932); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eLast\nPoems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1943)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eAs a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eShe left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eHorace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers,\u003c/title\u003e none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhen Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThis Hand\u003c/title\u003e (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFriends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003ePoetry,\u003c/title\u003e hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eAtavism,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eFire and\nSleet and Candlelight,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eSilver Filigree,\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eVelvet Shoes,\u003c/title\u003e which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOne of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn,\u003c/title\u003e in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eDuring the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eVanity Fair.\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian Glass\nNephew,\u003c/title\u003e deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eJewelled Bindings,\u003c/title\u003e written in 1923\nwhile she was composing \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour,\u003c/title\u003e is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003ePortrait in Black\nPaint,\u003c/title\u003e she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (1926) and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Puritan's Ballad.\u003c/title\u003e Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eBy late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhile arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical/Historical Information"],"bioghist_tesim":["Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003ePapers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"prefercite_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va."],"processinfo_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eVirtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n        ","\u003cp\u003eMr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"processinfo_heading_ssm":["Processing Information"],"processinfo_tesim":["Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide."],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe majority of the letters were written to \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOther correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Content"],"scopecontent_tesim":["The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman."],"userestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eSee the \n            \u003cextref type=\"simple\" href=\"https://www.library.virginia.edu/policies/use-of-materials\"\u003e\n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.\u003c/extref\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"userestrict_heading_ssm":["Use Restrictions"],"userestrict_tesim":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"names_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"language_ssim":["English"],"total_component_count_is":159,"online_item_count_is":0,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c88"}},{"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c61","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Thursday\" [1922 Summer]","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c61#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003e\"MacDowell\" [Stanley Olsen] #8287-c \u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c61#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02_c61","ref_ssm":["viu_viu03944_c02_c61"],"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c61","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_ids_ssim":["viu_viu03944","viu_viu03944_c02"],"title_filing_ssi":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Thursday\" [1922 Summer]","title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Thursday\" [1922 Summer]"],"title_tesim":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Thursday\" [1922 Summer]"],"normalized_title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Thursday\" [1922 Summer]"],"text":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My darling\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Thursday\" [1922 Summer]","Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence","TL, 4 pp. on 4 l.","box-folder 1:77","William Rose Benét","\"MacDowell\" [Stanley Olsen]\n#8287-c"],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[2],"sort_isi":79,"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"physdesc_tesim":["TL, 4 pp. on 4 l."],"containers_ssim":["box-folder 1:77"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["There are no restrictions."],"parent_access_terms_tesm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"names_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e\"MacDowell\" [Stanley Olsen]\n\u003cnum\u003e#8287-c\n\u003c/num\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n          "],"scopecontent_tesim":["\"MacDowell\" [Stanley Olsen]\n#8287-c"],"_nest_path_":"/components#1/components#60","timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"viu_viu03944","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/uva-sc/viu03944.xml","title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"text":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","8287, etc.","This collection consists of \n166 items.","There are no restrictions.","The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.","Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.","Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.","The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.","See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.","William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's","English"],"collection_title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"level_ssm":["collection"],"level_ssim":["Collection"],"unitid_ssm":["8287, etc."],"unitid_tesim":["8287, etc."],"repository_ssm":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"creator_persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"creators_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"access_terms_ssm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"acqinfo_ssim":["8287: Deposit: June 16, 1966; Gift, July 1, 1991. 8287-a: Purchase: \nJanuary 26, 1968. 8287-b: Deposit, January 11, 1971; Gift, July 1, \n1991. 8287-c: Purchase, June 7, 1978. 8287-d: Deposit: June 12, 1978; \nGift,\nJuly 1, 1991."],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"physdesc_tesim":["This collection consists of \n166 items."],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThere are no restrictions.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Access Restrictions"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["There are no restrictions."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eElinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers\u003c/title\u003e\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian\nGlass Nephew\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1925); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eElinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Simon \n\u0026amp; Schuster, 1926); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1926) \n\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets\u003c/title\u003e \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly\nCreatures\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eCollected Poems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1932); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eLast\nPoems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1943)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eAs a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eShe left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eHorace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers,\u003c/title\u003e none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhen Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThis Hand\u003c/title\u003e (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFriends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003ePoetry,\u003c/title\u003e hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eAtavism,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eFire and\nSleet and Candlelight,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eSilver Filigree,\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eVelvet Shoes,\u003c/title\u003e which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOne of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn,\u003c/title\u003e in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eDuring the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eVanity Fair.\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian Glass\nNephew,\u003c/title\u003e deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eJewelled Bindings,\u003c/title\u003e written in 1923\nwhile she was composing \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour,\u003c/title\u003e is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003ePortrait in Black\nPaint,\u003c/title\u003e she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (1926) and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Puritan's Ballad.\u003c/title\u003e Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eBy late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhile arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical/Historical Information"],"bioghist_tesim":["Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003ePapers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"prefercite_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va."],"processinfo_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eVirtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n        ","\u003cp\u003eMr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"processinfo_heading_ssm":["Processing Information"],"processinfo_tesim":["Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide."],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe majority of the letters were written to \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOther correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Content"],"scopecontent_tesim":["The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman."],"userestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eSee the \n            \u003cextref type=\"simple\" href=\"https://www.library.virginia.edu/policies/use-of-materials\"\u003e\n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.\u003c/extref\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"userestrict_heading_ssm":["Use Restrictions"],"userestrict_tesim":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"names_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"language_ssim":["English"],"total_component_count_is":159,"online_item_count_is":0,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c61"}},{"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c130","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dear darling boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Monday, \" n.d.","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c130#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003e#8287-c \u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c130#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02_c130","ref_ssm":["viu_viu03944_c02_c130"],"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c130","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_ids_ssim":["viu_viu03944","viu_viu03944_c02"],"title_filing_ssi":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dear darling boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Monday,\" n.d.","title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dear darling boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Monday, \" n.d."],"title_tesim":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dear darling boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Monday, \" n.d."],"normalized_title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dear darling boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Monday, \" n.d."],"text":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dear darling boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Monday, \" n.d.","Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence","ALS, 6 pp on 6 l.","box-folder 2:62","William Rose Benét","#8287-c"],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[2],"sort_isi":148,"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"physdesc_tesim":["ALS, 6 pp on 6 l."],"containers_ssim":["box-folder 2:62"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["There are no restrictions."],"parent_access_terms_tesm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"names_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e\n              \u003cnum\u003e#8287-c\n\u003c/num\u003e\n            \u003c/p\u003e\n          "],"scopecontent_tesim":["#8287-c"],"_nest_path_":"/components#1/components#129","timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"viu_viu03944","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/uva-sc/viu03944.xml","title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"text":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","8287, etc.","This collection consists of \n166 items.","There are no restrictions.","The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.","Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.","Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.","The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.","See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.","William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's","English"],"collection_title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"level_ssm":["collection"],"level_ssim":["Collection"],"unitid_ssm":["8287, etc."],"unitid_tesim":["8287, etc."],"repository_ssm":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"creator_persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"creators_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"access_terms_ssm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"acqinfo_ssim":["8287: Deposit: June 16, 1966; Gift, July 1, 1991. 8287-a: Purchase: \nJanuary 26, 1968. 8287-b: Deposit, January 11, 1971; Gift, July 1, \n1991. 8287-c: Purchase, June 7, 1978. 8287-d: Deposit: June 12, 1978; \nGift,\nJuly 1, 1991."],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"physdesc_tesim":["This collection consists of \n166 items."],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThere are no restrictions.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Access Restrictions"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["There are no restrictions."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eElinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers\u003c/title\u003e\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian\nGlass Nephew\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1925); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eElinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Simon \n\u0026amp; Schuster, 1926); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1926) \n\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets\u003c/title\u003e \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly\nCreatures\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eCollected Poems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1932); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eLast\nPoems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1943)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eAs a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eShe left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eHorace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers,\u003c/title\u003e none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhen Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThis Hand\u003c/title\u003e (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFriends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003ePoetry,\u003c/title\u003e hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eAtavism,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eFire and\nSleet and Candlelight,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eSilver Filigree,\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eVelvet Shoes,\u003c/title\u003e which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOne of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn,\u003c/title\u003e in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eDuring the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eVanity Fair.\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian Glass\nNephew,\u003c/title\u003e deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eJewelled Bindings,\u003c/title\u003e written in 1923\nwhile she was composing \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour,\u003c/title\u003e is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003ePortrait in Black\nPaint,\u003c/title\u003e she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (1926) and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Puritan's Ballad.\u003c/title\u003e Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eBy late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhile arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical/Historical Information"],"bioghist_tesim":["Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003ePapers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"prefercite_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va."],"processinfo_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eVirtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n        ","\u003cp\u003eMr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"processinfo_heading_ssm":["Processing Information"],"processinfo_tesim":["Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide."],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe majority of the letters were written to \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOther correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Content"],"scopecontent_tesim":["The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman."],"userestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eSee the \n            \u003cextref type=\"simple\" href=\"https://www.library.virginia.edu/policies/use-of-materials\"\u003e\n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.\u003c/extref\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"userestrict_heading_ssm":["Use Restrictions"],"userestrict_tesim":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"names_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"language_ssim":["English"],"total_component_count_is":159,"online_item_count_is":0,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c130"}},{"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c26","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest boy\" [William Rose Benét]\nMonday [1921 Summer]","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c26#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003e\"Florida Avenue. Canby is Dr. Canby, editor of Literary Review.\" [Stanley Olsen] #8287-c \u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c26#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02_c26","ref_ssm":["viu_viu03944_c02_c26"],"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c26","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_ids_ssim":["viu_viu03944","viu_viu03944_c02"],"title_filing_ssi":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest boy\" [William Rose Benét]\nMonday [1921 Summer]","title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest boy\" [William Rose Benét]\nMonday [1921 Summer]"],"title_tesim":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest boy\" [William Rose Benét]\nMonday [1921 Summer]"],"normalized_title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest boy\" [William Rose Benét]\nMonday [1921 Summer]"],"text":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest boy\" [William Rose Benét]\nMonday [1921 Summer]","Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence","TL, 3 pp. on 3 l.","box-folder 1:42","William Rose Benét","\"Florida Avenue. Canby is Dr. Canby, editor of Literary Review.\" \n[Stanley Olsen]\n#8287-c"],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[2],"sort_isi":44,"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"physdesc_tesim":["TL, 3 pp. on 3 l."],"containers_ssim":["box-folder 1:42"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["There are no restrictions."],"parent_access_terms_tesm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"names_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e\"Florida Avenue. Canby is Dr. Canby, editor of Literary Review.\" \n[Stanley Olsen]\n\u003cnum\u003e#8287-c\n\u003c/num\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n          "],"scopecontent_tesim":["\"Florida Avenue. Canby is Dr. Canby, editor of Literary Review.\" \n[Stanley Olsen]\n#8287-c"],"_nest_path_":"/components#1/components#25","timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"viu_viu03944","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/uva-sc/viu03944.xml","title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"text":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","8287, etc.","This collection consists of \n166 items.","There are no restrictions.","The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.","Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.","Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.","The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.","See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.","William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's","English"],"collection_title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"level_ssm":["collection"],"level_ssim":["Collection"],"unitid_ssm":["8287, etc."],"unitid_tesim":["8287, etc."],"repository_ssm":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"creator_persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"creators_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"access_terms_ssm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"acqinfo_ssim":["8287: Deposit: June 16, 1966; Gift, July 1, 1991. 8287-a: Purchase: \nJanuary 26, 1968. 8287-b: Deposit, January 11, 1971; Gift, July 1, \n1991. 8287-c: Purchase, June 7, 1978. 8287-d: Deposit: June 12, 1978; \nGift,\nJuly 1, 1991."],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"physdesc_tesim":["This collection consists of \n166 items."],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThere are no restrictions.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Access Restrictions"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["There are no restrictions."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eElinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers\u003c/title\u003e\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian\nGlass Nephew\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1925); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eElinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Simon \n\u0026amp; Schuster, 1926); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1926) \n\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets\u003c/title\u003e \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly\nCreatures\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eCollected Poems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1932); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eLast\nPoems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1943)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eAs a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eShe left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eHorace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers,\u003c/title\u003e none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhen Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThis Hand\u003c/title\u003e (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFriends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003ePoetry,\u003c/title\u003e hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eAtavism,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eFire and\nSleet and Candlelight,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eSilver Filigree,\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eVelvet Shoes,\u003c/title\u003e which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOne of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn,\u003c/title\u003e in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eDuring the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eVanity Fair.\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian Glass\nNephew,\u003c/title\u003e deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eJewelled Bindings,\u003c/title\u003e written in 1923\nwhile she was composing \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour,\u003c/title\u003e is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003ePortrait in Black\nPaint,\u003c/title\u003e she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (1926) and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Puritan's Ballad.\u003c/title\u003e Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eBy late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhile arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical/Historical Information"],"bioghist_tesim":["Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003ePapers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"prefercite_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va."],"processinfo_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eVirtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n        ","\u003cp\u003eMr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"processinfo_heading_ssm":["Processing Information"],"processinfo_tesim":["Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide."],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe majority of the letters were written to \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOther correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Content"],"scopecontent_tesim":["The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman."],"userestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eSee the \n            \u003cextref type=\"simple\" href=\"https://www.library.virginia.edu/policies/use-of-materials\"\u003e\n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.\u003c/extref\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"userestrict_heading_ssm":["Use Restrictions"],"userestrict_tesim":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"names_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"language_ssim":["English"],"total_component_count_is":159,"online_item_count_is":0,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c26"}},{"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c14","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My Dearest Boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday\" [1921 January or February?]","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c14#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003e#8287-c \u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c14#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02_c14","ref_ssm":["viu_viu03944_c02_c14"],"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c14","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_ids_ssim":["viu_viu03944","viu_viu03944_c02"],"title_filing_ssi":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My Dearest Boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday\" [1921 January or February?]","title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My Dearest Boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday\" [1921 January or February?]"],"title_tesim":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My Dearest Boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday\" [1921 January or February?]"],"normalized_title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My Dearest Boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday\" [1921 January or February?]"],"text":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My Dearest Boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday\" [1921 January or February?]","Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence","TL, 3 pp. on 3 l.","box-folder 1:30","William Rose Benét","#8287-c"],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[2],"sort_isi":32,"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"physdesc_tesim":["TL, 3 pp. on 3 l."],"containers_ssim":["box-folder 1:30"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["There are no restrictions."],"parent_access_terms_tesm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"names_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e\n              \u003cnum\u003e#8287-c\n\u003c/num\u003e\n            \u003c/p\u003e\n          "],"scopecontent_tesim":["#8287-c"],"_nest_path_":"/components#1/components#13","timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"viu_viu03944","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/uva-sc/viu03944.xml","title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"text":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","8287, etc.","This collection consists of \n166 items.","There are no restrictions.","The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.","Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.","Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.","The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.","See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.","William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's","English"],"collection_title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"level_ssm":["collection"],"level_ssim":["Collection"],"unitid_ssm":["8287, etc."],"unitid_tesim":["8287, etc."],"repository_ssm":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"creator_persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"creators_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"access_terms_ssm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"acqinfo_ssim":["8287: Deposit: June 16, 1966; Gift, July 1, 1991. 8287-a: Purchase: \nJanuary 26, 1968. 8287-b: Deposit, January 11, 1971; Gift, July 1, \n1991. 8287-c: Purchase, June 7, 1978. 8287-d: Deposit: June 12, 1978; \nGift,\nJuly 1, 1991."],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"physdesc_tesim":["This collection consists of \n166 items."],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThere are no restrictions.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Access Restrictions"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["There are no restrictions."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eElinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers\u003c/title\u003e\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian\nGlass Nephew\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1925); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eElinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Simon \n\u0026amp; Schuster, 1926); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1926) \n\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets\u003c/title\u003e \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly\nCreatures\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eCollected Poems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1932); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eLast\nPoems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1943)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eAs a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eShe left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eHorace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers,\u003c/title\u003e none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhen Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThis Hand\u003c/title\u003e (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFriends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003ePoetry,\u003c/title\u003e hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eAtavism,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eFire and\nSleet and Candlelight,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eSilver Filigree,\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eVelvet Shoes,\u003c/title\u003e which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOne of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn,\u003c/title\u003e in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eDuring the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eVanity Fair.\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian Glass\nNephew,\u003c/title\u003e deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eJewelled Bindings,\u003c/title\u003e written in 1923\nwhile she was composing \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour,\u003c/title\u003e is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003ePortrait in Black\nPaint,\u003c/title\u003e she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (1926) and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Puritan's Ballad.\u003c/title\u003e Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eBy late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhile arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical/Historical Information"],"bioghist_tesim":["Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003ePapers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"prefercite_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va."],"processinfo_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eVirtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n        ","\u003cp\u003eMr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"processinfo_heading_ssm":["Processing Information"],"processinfo_tesim":["Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide."],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe majority of the letters were written to \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOther correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Content"],"scopecontent_tesim":["The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman."],"userestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eSee the \n            \u003cextref type=\"simple\" href=\"https://www.library.virginia.edu/policies/use-of-materials\"\u003e\n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.\u003c/extref\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"userestrict_heading_ssm":["Use Restrictions"],"userestrict_tesim":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"names_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"language_ssim":["English"],"total_component_count_is":159,"online_item_count_is":0,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c14"}},{"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c109","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Thursday\" [1923 June]","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c109#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003e#8287-c \u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c109#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02_c109","ref_ssm":["viu_viu03944_c02_c109"],"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c109","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_ids_ssim":["viu_viu03944","viu_viu03944_c02"],"title_filing_ssi":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Thursday\" [1923 June]","title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Thursday\" [1923 June]"],"title_tesim":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Thursday\" [1923 June]"],"normalized_title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Thursday\" [1923 June]"],"text":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest boy\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Thursday\" [1923 June]","Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence","TL, 3 pp. on 3 l.","box-folder 2:41","William Rose Benét","#8287-c"],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[2],"sort_isi":127,"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"physdesc_tesim":["TL, 3 pp. on 3 l."],"containers_ssim":["box-folder 2:41"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["There are no restrictions."],"parent_access_terms_tesm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"names_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e\n              \u003cnum\u003e#8287-c\n\u003c/num\u003e\n            \u003c/p\u003e\n          "],"scopecontent_tesim":["#8287-c"],"_nest_path_":"/components#1/components#108","timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"viu_viu03944","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/uva-sc/viu03944.xml","title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"text":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","8287, etc.","This collection consists of \n166 items.","There are no restrictions.","The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.","Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.","Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.","The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.","See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.","William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's","English"],"collection_title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"level_ssm":["collection"],"level_ssim":["Collection"],"unitid_ssm":["8287, etc."],"unitid_tesim":["8287, etc."],"repository_ssm":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"creator_persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"creators_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"access_terms_ssm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"acqinfo_ssim":["8287: Deposit: June 16, 1966; Gift, July 1, 1991. 8287-a: Purchase: \nJanuary 26, 1968. 8287-b: Deposit, January 11, 1971; Gift, July 1, \n1991. 8287-c: Purchase, June 7, 1978. 8287-d: Deposit: June 12, 1978; \nGift,\nJuly 1, 1991."],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"physdesc_tesim":["This collection consists of \n166 items."],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThere are no restrictions.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Access Restrictions"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["There are no restrictions."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eElinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers\u003c/title\u003e\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian\nGlass Nephew\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1925); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eElinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Simon \n\u0026amp; Schuster, 1926); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1926) \n\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets\u003c/title\u003e \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly\nCreatures\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eCollected Poems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1932); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eLast\nPoems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1943)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eAs a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eShe left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eHorace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers,\u003c/title\u003e none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhen Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThis Hand\u003c/title\u003e (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFriends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003ePoetry,\u003c/title\u003e hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eAtavism,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eFire and\nSleet and Candlelight,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eSilver Filigree,\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eVelvet Shoes,\u003c/title\u003e which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOne of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn,\u003c/title\u003e in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eDuring the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eVanity Fair.\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian Glass\nNephew,\u003c/title\u003e deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eJewelled Bindings,\u003c/title\u003e written in 1923\nwhile she was composing \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour,\u003c/title\u003e is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003ePortrait in Black\nPaint,\u003c/title\u003e she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (1926) and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Puritan's Ballad.\u003c/title\u003e Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eBy late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhile arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical/Historical Information"],"bioghist_tesim":["Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003ePapers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"prefercite_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va."],"processinfo_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eVirtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n        ","\u003cp\u003eMr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"processinfo_heading_ssm":["Processing Information"],"processinfo_tesim":["Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide."],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe majority of the letters were written to \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOther correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Content"],"scopecontent_tesim":["The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman."],"userestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eSee the \n            \u003cextref type=\"simple\" href=\"https://www.library.virginia.edu/policies/use-of-materials\"\u003e\n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.\u003c/extref\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"userestrict_heading_ssm":["Use Restrictions"],"userestrict_tesim":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"names_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"language_ssim":["English"],"total_component_count_is":159,"online_item_count_is":0,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c109"}},{"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c120","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest love\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday\" [1923 Summer]","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c120#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003e\"from MacDowell\" [unidentified] #8287-c \u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c120#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02_c120","ref_ssm":["viu_viu03944_c02_c120"],"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c120","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_ids_ssim":["viu_viu03944","viu_viu03944_c02"],"title_filing_ssi":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest love\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday\" [1923 Summer]","title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest love\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday\" [1923 Summer]"],"title_tesim":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest love\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday\" [1923 Summer]"],"normalized_title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest love\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday\" [1923 Summer]"],"text":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest love\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Saturday\" [1923 Summer]","Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence","TL, 3 pp. on 3 l.","box-folder 2:52","William Rose Benét","\"from MacDowell\" [unidentified]\n#8287-c"],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[2],"sort_isi":138,"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"physdesc_tesim":["TL, 3 pp. on 3 l."],"containers_ssim":["box-folder 2:52"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["There are no restrictions."],"parent_access_terms_tesm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"names_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e\"from MacDowell\" [unidentified]\n\u003cnum\u003e#8287-c\n\u003c/num\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n          "],"scopecontent_tesim":["\"from MacDowell\" [unidentified]\n#8287-c"],"_nest_path_":"/components#1/components#119","timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"viu_viu03944","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/uva-sc/viu03944.xml","title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"text":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","8287, etc.","This collection consists of \n166 items.","There are no restrictions.","The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.","Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.","Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.","The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.","See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.","William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's","English"],"collection_title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"level_ssm":["collection"],"level_ssim":["Collection"],"unitid_ssm":["8287, etc."],"unitid_tesim":["8287, etc."],"repository_ssm":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"creator_persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"creators_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"access_terms_ssm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"acqinfo_ssim":["8287: Deposit: June 16, 1966; Gift, July 1, 1991. 8287-a: Purchase: \nJanuary 26, 1968. 8287-b: Deposit, January 11, 1971; Gift, July 1, \n1991. 8287-c: Purchase, June 7, 1978. 8287-d: Deposit: June 12, 1978; \nGift,\nJuly 1, 1991."],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"physdesc_tesim":["This collection consists of \n166 items."],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThere are no restrictions.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Access Restrictions"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["There are no restrictions."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eElinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers\u003c/title\u003e\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian\nGlass Nephew\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1925); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eElinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Simon \n\u0026amp; Schuster, 1926); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1926) \n\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets\u003c/title\u003e \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly\nCreatures\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eCollected Poems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1932); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eLast\nPoems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1943)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eAs a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eShe left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eHorace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers,\u003c/title\u003e none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhen Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThis Hand\u003c/title\u003e (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFriends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003ePoetry,\u003c/title\u003e hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eAtavism,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eFire and\nSleet and Candlelight,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eSilver Filigree,\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eVelvet Shoes,\u003c/title\u003e which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOne of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn,\u003c/title\u003e in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eDuring the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eVanity Fair.\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian Glass\nNephew,\u003c/title\u003e deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eJewelled Bindings,\u003c/title\u003e written in 1923\nwhile she was composing \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour,\u003c/title\u003e is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003ePortrait in Black\nPaint,\u003c/title\u003e she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (1926) and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Puritan's Ballad.\u003c/title\u003e Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eBy late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhile arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical/Historical Information"],"bioghist_tesim":["Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003ePapers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"prefercite_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va."],"processinfo_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eVirtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n        ","\u003cp\u003eMr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"processinfo_heading_ssm":["Processing Information"],"processinfo_tesim":["Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide."],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe majority of the letters were written to \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOther correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Content"],"scopecontent_tesim":["The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman."],"userestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eSee the \n            \u003cextref type=\"simple\" href=\"https://www.library.virginia.edu/policies/use-of-materials\"\u003e\n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.\u003c/extref\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"userestrict_heading_ssm":["Use Restrictions"],"userestrict_tesim":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"names_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"language_ssim":["English"],"total_component_count_is":159,"online_item_count_is":0,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c120"}},{"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c58","type":"Item","attributes":{"title":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest love\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Wednesday\" [1922 Summer?]","abstract_or_scope":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c58#abstract_or_scope","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":"\u003cp\u003e\"from MacDowell\" [Stanley Olsen] #8287-c \u003c/p\u003e","label":"Abstract Or Scope"}},"breadcrumbs":{"id":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c58#breadcrumbs","type":"document_value","attributes":{"value":{"ref_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02_c58","ref_ssm":["viu_viu03944_c02_c58"],"id":"viu_viu03944_c02_c58","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssi":"viu_viu03944_c02","parent_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_ids_ssim":["viu_viu03944","viu_viu03944_c02"],"title_filing_ssi":"\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest love\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Wednesday\" [1922 Summer?]","title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest love\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Wednesday\" [1922 Summer?]"],"title_tesim":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest love\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Wednesday\" [1922 Summer?]"],"normalized_title_ssm":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest love\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Wednesday\" [1922 Summer?]"],"text":["\"N.\" [Elinor Wylie] to \"My dearest love\" [William Rose Benét]\n\"Wednesday\" [1922 Summer?]","Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence","TLS, 1 p. on 1 l.","box-folder 1:74","William Rose Benét","\"from MacDowell\" [Stanley Olsen]\n#8287-c"],"parent_unittitles_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"parent_unittitles_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","Series II: Correspondence"],"level_ssm":["Item"],"level_ssim":["Item"],"component_level_isim":[2],"sort_isi":76,"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"physdesc_tesim":["TLS, 1 p. on 1 l."],"containers_ssim":["box-folder 1:74"],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"child_component_count_isi":0,"parent_access_restrict_tesm":["There are no restrictions."],"parent_access_terms_tesm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"names_ssim":["William Rose Benét"],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003e\"from MacDowell\" [Stanley Olsen]\n\u003cnum\u003e#8287-c\n\u003c/num\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n          "],"scopecontent_tesim":["\"from MacDowell\" [Stanley Olsen]\n#8287-c"],"_nest_path_":"/components#1/components#57","timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z","collection":{"numFound":1,"start":0,"numFoundExact":true,"docs":[{"id":"viu_viu03944","ead_ssi":"viu_viu03944","_root_":"viu_viu03944","_nest_parent_":"viu_viu03944","ead_source_url_ssi":"data/uva-sc/viu03944.xml","title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"normalized_title_ssm":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"text":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","8287, etc.","This collection consists of \n166 items.","There are no restrictions.","The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.","Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.","Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.","The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.","See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.","William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's","English"],"collection_title_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"collection_ssim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928"],"level_ssm":["collection"],"level_ssim":["Collection"],"unitid_ssm":["8287, etc."],"unitid_tesim":["8287, etc."],"repository_ssm":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"repository_ssim":["University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept."],"creator_persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"creators_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"access_terms_ssm":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"acqinfo_ssim":["8287: Deposit: June 16, 1966; Gift, July 1, 1991. 8287-a: Purchase: \nJanuary 26, 1968. 8287-b: Deposit, January 11, 1971; Gift, July 1, \n1991. 8287-c: Purchase, June 7, 1978. 8287-d: Deposit: June 12, 1978; \nGift,\nJuly 1, 1991."],"has_online_content_ssim":["false"],"physdesc_tesim":["This collection consists of \n166 items."],"accessrestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThere are no restrictions.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"accessrestrict_heading_ssm":["Access Restrictions"],"accessrestrict_tesim":["There are no restrictions."],"arrangement_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"arrangement_heading_ssm":["Arrangement"],"arrangement_tesim":["The collection is arranged in three series: Series I, Literary \nManuscripts is arranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts originally \nenclosed in letters are retained with the letters in the correspondence\nseries. Series II, Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by surname of \ncorrespondent and subarranged chronologically. Poetry manuscripts \noriginally enclosed in letters are retained with the letters in this\nseries. Series III is arranged by physical format."],"bioghist_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eElinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers\u003c/title\u003e\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1923); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian\nGlass Nephew\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Doran, 1925); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eElinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Simon \n\u0026amp; Schuster, 1926); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1926) \n\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets\u003c/title\u003e \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eAngels and Earthly\nCreatures\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eCollected Poems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1932); \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eLast\nPoems of Elinor Wylie\u003c/title\u003e (New York : Knopf, 1943)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eAs a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eIn 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eShe left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eHorace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eIncidental Numbers,\u003c/title\u003e none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhen Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThis Hand\u003c/title\u003e (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour\u003c/title\u003e, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFriends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003ePoetry,\u003c/title\u003e hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eAtavism,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eFire and\nSleet and Candlelight,\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eSilver Filigree,\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eVelvet Shoes,\u003c/title\u003e which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOne of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose \nBenét\u003c/persname\u003e. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn,\u003c/title\u003e in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eDuring the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eVanity Fair.\u003c/title\u003e\u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eNets to Catch the Wind\u003c/title\u003e (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eJennifer Lorn\u003c/title\u003e and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Venetian Glass\nNephew,\u003c/title\u003e deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eJewelled Bindings,\u003c/title\u003e written in 1923\nwhile she was composing \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eBlack Armour,\u003c/title\u003e is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003ePortrait in Black\nPaint,\u003c/title\u003e she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Orphan Angel\u003c/title\u003e (1926) and \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eMr. Hodge \u0026amp; Mr. Hazard\u003c/title\u003e (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"italic\" href=\"\"\u003eTrivial Breath\u003c/title\u003e (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as \u003ctitle type=\"simple\" render=\"doublequote\" href=\"\"\u003eThe Puritan's Ballad.\u003c/title\u003e Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eBy late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eWhile arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"bioghist_heading_ssm":["Biographical/Historical Information"],"bioghist_tesim":["Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie, born September 7, 1885, Somerville, New \nJersey; died December 16, 1928, New York, New York; married Philip \nHichborn, 1906; eloped with Horace Wylie, December, 1910, and moved \nwith him\nto England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring; returned to U.S., 1914; \nmarried Wylie, August 7, 1916 (separated, 1921, divorced, 1923); \nmarried William Rose \nBenét, 1923; children: (first marriage) Philip \nHichborn\nIII, (second marriage) one son (died in infancy). Poet and novelist; poetry \neditor Vanity Fair, 1923-1925; editor Literary Guild, 1926-1928; \ncontributing editor, New Republic, 1926-1928. Works: Incidental Numbers\n(London : Privately printed, 1912); Nets to Catch the Wind (New York : \nHarcourt, Brace, 1921); Black Armour (New York : Doran, 1923); Jennifer\nLorn: a Sedate Extravaganza (New York : Doran, 1923); The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (New York : Doran, 1925); Elinor Wylie (New York : Simon \n\u0026 Schuster, 1926); The Orphan Angel (New York : Knopf, 1926) \nTrivial Breath (New York : Knopf, 1928); Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard \n(New York\n: Knopf, 1928); Angels and Earthly Creatures: a Sequence of Sonnets \n(Henley-on-Thames, The Borough Press, 1928); Angels and Earthly\nCreatures (New York : Knopf, 1929); Birthday Sonnet (New York : \nRandom House,\n1929); Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1932); Last\nPoems of Elinor Wylie (New York : Knopf, 1943)","In her lifetime Elinor Hoyt Wylie won notoriety for her unconventional \nprivate life and acclaim for her poems and novels. Carl Van Doren \ncelebrated her as a \"poet and queen of poets.\" Prominent members of \nthe\nNew York literary scene in the 1920s--such as Edmund Wilson, Carl Van \nVechten, and her third husband, William Rose Benét--admired her beauty and \nliterary achievements.","The daughter of Henry Martyn and Anne McMichael Hoyt, Wylie was \nborn on September 7, 1885 into a socially and politically prominent family \nin Somerville, New Jersey. (Later, believing Somerville insufficiently\nromantic, she hoped that people would imagine Paris or Persepolis as her \nplace of birth.) Her family moved to Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of \nPhiladelphia, in 1887. In 1897 her father became assistant attorney\ngeneral of the United States, taking the family to Washington, D.C. \nAlthough her life outwardly traced a romantic course, her three marriages \nnever brought her the emotional fulfillment she sought, and her poetic\nsuccess never erased her self-doubts. A perfectionist, shy and uncertain \nof her talents, Wylie required unqualified approval from others. Hers was a \ncomplex and contradictory nature. Her poetry articulates her\ncentral conflicts: a desire for love that led to a series of disappointing \nmarriages, a delicate sensitivity which often made her wish to escape a \nhostile and unlovely world, a yearning for transcendent spiritual\nvision that she felt was beyond the reach of her limited gifts.","As a young woman growing up in an aristocratic family, Wylie was \ngroomed for the life of a socialite. Yet she had a questing intellect as well. \nHer sister, Nancy Hoyt, asserts that Elinor was \"passionately\ninterested in her school work,\" with a love of books and an artistic \navocation. Her scholarly interest is reflected in the meticulous research \nunderlying her novels. But, despite the urging of her teachers at Miss\nBaldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and at Mrs. Flint's (later the \nHolton Arms) school in Washington, her parents did not allow her to \ncontinue her education. Instead, she was launched as a debutante.\nAlthough the social career her parents deemed appropriate began \nbrilliantly, it could never absorb her interests and energies completely.","In 1905, apparently on the rebound from a short-lived romance, Wylie \nmarried Philip Simmons Hichborn and gave birth to his son Philip Hichborn \nIII in September 1907. Hichborn proved to be emotionally unstable.\nDuring this difficult marriage, Wylie began to suffer from the high blood \npressure and migraine headaches which would plague her throughout her \nlife. Wylie's first two novels, Jennifer Lorn (1923) and The Venetian\nGlass Nephew (1925) describe women suffering in disastrous marriages. \nThe husbands in both books compel their wives to become decorative \nobjects. Attempting to meet these needs, the heroines are destroyed.\nUndoubtedly, Wylie's account is at least partially autobiographical.","She left Hichborn in December 1910, eloping with a married lawyer, \nHorace Wylie, and leaving behind her son, who was raised by Hichborn's \nsister Martha Pearsall. Wylie's elopement and abandonment of her child\nbecame a highly publicized scandal in conservative Washington. The \ncouple lived in England as Mr. and Mrs. Horace Waring to escape publicity \nand social ostracism. (As late as 1927, the League of American Pen \nWomen\nin Washington countermanded an honor-guest breakfast invitation they \nhad extended to Wylie.)","Horace Wylie encouraged Elinor's literary interests. In 1912 she \npublished privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of \nwhich she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. The\npoems, written between 1902 and 1911, indicate some of the themes \nshe would continue to explore--magic, love, entrapment and isolation--and \nreveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie\nkept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet \nMonroe, editor of Poetry, \"I have never published anything--never tried to, \nuntil the last few weeks.\"","When Britain entered World War I the Wylies returned to the United \nStates, living in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. They \nwere distressed by family coldness, bad financial straits, social\ndisapproval, and Elinor's poor health. Perhaps out of guilt for the loss of \nher son, Elinor eagerly wished for a child. From 1914 to 1916 she had \nseveral miscarriages, one stillbirth, and a premature child who\ndied after a week. She perceived this inability to produce a child as a \npersonal failure. She felt estranged from Wylie and wrote bitterly about \nher frigidity in poems such as This Hand (Black Armour, 1923).\nAfter Horace Wylie at last succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his wife \nand Hichborn had committed suicide, they were married on August 7, \n1916. But the strains of their position had already damaged the fiber of\nthe relationship. Elinor withdrew emotionally from Horace as she grew \nincreasingly involved in her literary career.","Friends such as John Dos Passos, John Peale Bishop, and Edmund \nWilson convinced her to take her writing seriously. In November 1919 she \nsent some poems to Poetry, hesitantly, for she feared her work was not\n\"modern enough\" for the magazine. Wylie's reluctance is understandable, \nfor her work looked back toward her literary forerunners, and did not \nparticipate in the contemporary experimentation with free verse.\nThroughout her career, Wylie wrote in rhyming stanzas, often working \nwith ballads and sonnets. But Monroe allayed her concerns, and asked for \nmore poems, publishing four in the May 1920 issue (Atavism,Fire and\nSleet and Candlelight,Silver Filigree, and Velvet Shoes, which would \nbecome her most widely anthologized poem). As her work began to gain \nrecognition and acceptance, Wylie devoted herself to her writing.","One of her strongest supporters at this time was her brother Henry's \nfriend William Rose \nBenét. Benét encouraged Wylie to submit \nher work and frequently acted as her literary agent, placing her\npoems and advising her about contracts and projects. On the strength of \nher growing literary reputation, Wylie separated from her husband and \nmoved to New York in 1921. Here she captivated the literary world with\nher slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and \ntechnical virtuosity. Her success was almost legendary: Carl Van Vechten \norganized a torchlight parade to celebrate publication of her first\nnovel, Jennifer Lorn, in 1923. In the same year, at perhaps the height of \nher powers and fame, she divorced Wylie and married Benét. Yet, \nremarks which Edmund Wilson quoted in his diary before the wedding\nsuggest that the marriage was doomed from the start. According to \nWilson, \"When I expressed my doubts about their union, she said with her \nharsh and callous laugh: 'Yes, it would be a pity that a first-rate poet\nshould be turned into a second-rate poet by marrying a third-rate poet.'\"","During the period from 1921 to her death in 1928, Wylie's literary \noutput was astonishing. She published four volumes of poetry and four \nnovels, as well as--less significantly--essays and reviews, and served\nfor a time as literary editor of Vanity Fair.Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) \nwon critical acclaim, receiving the Poetry Society's Julia Ellsworth Ford \nPrize. The book, a substantial advance over her juvenilia,\ncontains much of her best work. Writers such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, \nLouis Untermeyer, and Edmund Wilson praised it for its precision, its \nclarity, and its jewel-like brilliance.","Wylie, however, was aware of her limitations. In her poetry and prose \nshe satirized the aesthetic excesses of which she herself was often guilty. \nHer first two novels, Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass\nNephew, deal with the conflicting claims of art and nature, depicting the \ndestruction of heroines who succumb to others' demands that they \nbecome art objects. Yet, even as she satirized the inhumanity of an\naesthetic sensibility that values decorative objects over humans, she \noften allowed the sensual richness of her prose to subvert thematic \ndevelopment. Similarly, her essay Jewelled Bindings, written in 1923\nwhile she was composing Black Armour, is both defense and critique of \nher technique. She contended that she is a minor writer, defining herself \nin the images of a crafter rather than an artist; hers is a \"small\nclean technique.\" The article explains her vision, but also admits to its \nshortcomings: Wylie believed that she might create a \"gilded bird,\" but \nnot the living bird who could sing in the work of an \"authentic\ngenius.\" Such a genius was Wylie's idol, Percy Bysshe Shelley.","Wylie's interest in romanticism grew from her strong identification \nwith Shelley, dating from her first reading of the poet when she was \nseven. Her enthusiasm for Shelley may have occasionally verged on\nobsession: she spent early royalties to purchase some of his letters; she \nsometimes entertained fantasies of Shelley's return to life; she argued \nShelley's merits at dinner parties, and she wondered how he would\nhave responded to her. In a poetic self-caricature, Portrait in Black\nPaint, she mocks her \"peculiar schism.\"","The highest tribute she paid Shelley was to write two novels about \nhim, The Orphan Angel (1926) and Mr. Hodge \u0026 Mr. Hazard (1928). \nThe first of these is an elaborate fantasy of Shelley's returning to life\nand traveling through the American West in the company of David \nButternut, a Yankee sailor, searching for a mysterious and beautiful \nwoman whom he hopes to rescue. Critics were polarized in their \nresponses to this\nnovel. Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of \nkindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a \npicaresque exploration with minimal plot interest. The second\nof these novels recounts the decline of romanticism in the tale of \"the \nlast Romantic poet\" (a composite of Shelley and Wylie) vanquished by the \nbourgeois world of the Victorians, a world that cannot accept his\nvalues and his poetry. Critics agree that this book is her best novel.","Wylie dedicated her third volume of poetry, Trivial Breath (1928), to \nShelley. Also new in this volume is the cynical treatment of love in such \npoems as The Puritan's Ballad. Biographical evidence suggests\nthat the cynicism was a mask to conceal the pain of yet another failure of \nlove.","By late 1926 her marriage to Benét had lost its charm for \nWylie. Although she would not divorce him, she had begun to live apart, \nspending her time in and near London. In May 1927 she wrote to Horace\nWylie, affirming a continuing love for him, in spite of her remarriage, but \nthe following year, she experienced a new love which she felt to be the \nsupreme one of her life. The object of this affection was Henry\nde Clifford Woodhouse, whose home Wylie had visited, and whose wife \nshe had befriended. Wylie and Woodhouse took walks together and \ndiscussed philosophy.","While arranging the poems for her 1929 collection Angels and Earthly \nCreatures. Wylie returned to New York for a Christmas visit to \nBenét. On the evening of December 16, 1928 she set down the \ncompleted\ntypescript of her poems, picked up a volume of John Donne's sermons, \nand called to Benét for a glass of water. When he brought it to \nher, she walked toward him, murmured \"Is that all it is?,\" and fell to the\nfloor, dead of a stroke."],"prefercite_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003ePapers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"prefercite_tesim":["Papers of Elinor Wylie, Accession #8287, etc., Special Collections, \nUniversity of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va."],"processinfo_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eVirtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n        ","\u003cp\u003eMr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"processinfo_heading_ssm":["Processing Information"],"processinfo_tesim":["Virtually all of the items in this collection were undated by Wylie. \nMost of the dates now associated with items were assigned by Stanley \nOlson, author of Elinor Wylie: A Biography. Dates assigned to the\nmaterial are, in many cases, only tentative. For example, Olson noted that \nElinor Wylie was at the McDowell Colony in the summers of 1922 and \n1923; as her fellow \"colonists\" were effectively the same on both\noccasions, it is extremely difficult to determine in which year the letters \n\"from McDowell\" were written.","Mr. Olson also provided explanatory notes for many of the letters; \nthese notes were recorded on collection folders and have been \ntransferred to the appropriate scope/content note for each item in the \nguide."],"scopecontent_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eThe Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eThe majority of the letters were written to \u003cpersname normal=\"Willliam Rose Benet\"\u003eWilliam Rose Benét\u003c/persname\u003e \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eOther correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n      ","\u003cp\u003eFellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n    "],"scopecontent_heading_ssm":["Scope and Content"],"scopecontent_tesim":["The Papers of Elinor Wylie consist of poetry manuscripts, \ncorrespondence and miscellaneous newsclippings. The collection contains \n30 poems, fragments, and quotations by Wylie. Some of the poetry \nmanuscripts\nwere included in her letters and have been retained there.","The majority of the letters were written to William Rose Benét \nbetween 1921 and 1923. They discuss her work on Nets To Catch the \nWind, Black Armour, Jennifer Lorn, and an unpublished novel; publication \nof\nNets To Catch the Wind; her efforts to rent her house and leave \nWashington; financial troubles; her trips to New York; some family news; \nsummers at the MacDowell Colony; Benét's work for Henry Canby \nat the\nNew York Post; her work for Vanity Fair; and, her health. The letters are \nfilled with her sentiments for Benét and her hopes and plans for \nthe future.","Other correspondence includes a letter of Wylie to William Stanley \nBeaumont Braithwaite thanking him for his review of Nets To Catch the \nWind; to Grace Wolcott Hazard Conkling planning a visit and giving\nthanks; to Robert Newton Linscott sending delayed thanks; and, to \nDonald Friede agreeing to edit poems by Warren Gilbert. The papers also \ncontain letters of Benét to Teresa Frances Thompson \nBenét\nregarding a Harvard Yale football game, to Wylie encouraging her job \nsearch, to Donald Friede regarding Wylie's death, and 3 Christmas cards \nto the senior Benéts.","Fellow MacDowell Colony residents mentioned in the letters include \nEdward Arlington Robinson, DuBose Heyward, Douglas Moore, Mary and \nPadraic Colum and Herbert Gorman."],"userestrict_html_tesm":["\u003cp\u003eSee the \n            \u003cextref type=\"simple\" href=\"https://www.library.virginia.edu/policies/use-of-materials\"\u003e\n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy.\u003c/extref\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n      "],"userestrict_heading_ssm":["Use Restrictions"],"userestrict_tesim":["See the \n            \n            University of Virginia Library’s use policy."],"persname_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"names_ssim":["William Rose \nBenét","William Rose Benét","William Rose\nBenét","Stephen Vincent Benét","William Rose Benét's"],"language_ssim":["English"],"total_component_count_is":159,"online_item_count_is":0,"component_level_isim":[0],"sort_isi":0,"timestamp":"2026-08-14T22:59:36.042Z"}]}},"label":"Breadcrumbs"}}},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03944_c02_c58"}}],"included":[{"type":"facet","id":"repository_ssim","attributes":{"label":"Repository","items":[{"attributes":{"label":"University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept.","value":"University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept.","hits":129},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026f%5Brepository%5D%5B%5D=University+of+Virginia%2C+Special+Collections+Dept.\u0026view=compact"}}]},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/facet/repository_ssim.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"facet","id":"collection_ssim","attributes":{"label":"Collection","items":[{"attributes":{"label":"James Branch Cabell Collection \n 1886-1928","value":"James Branch Cabell Collection \n 1886-1928","hits":5},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bcollection%5D%5B%5D=James+Branch+Cabell+Collection+%0A+1886-1928\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026view=compact"}},{"attributes":{"label":"Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","value":"Papers of Elinor Wylie\n1921-1928","hits":124},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bcollection%5D%5B%5D=Papers+of+Elinor+Wylie%0A1921-1928\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026view=compact"}}]},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/facet/collection_ssim.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"facet","id":"date_range_isim","attributes":{"label":"Date range","items":[{"attributes":{"label":"1919","value":"1919","hits":2},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bdate_range%5D%5B%5D=1919\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026view=compact"}}]},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/facet/date_range_isim.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"facet","id":"names_ssim","attributes":{"label":"Names","items":[{"attributes":{"label":"A. Burton Clarke","value":"A. Burton Clarke","hits":1},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=A.+Burton+Clarke\u0026view=compact"}},{"attributes":{"label":"A. Grove Day","value":"A. Grove Day","hits":1},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=A.+Grove+Day\u0026view=compact"}},{"attributes":{"label":"A. L. S. Wood","value":"A. L. S. Wood","hits":2},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=A.+L.+S.+Wood\u0026view=compact"}},{"attributes":{"label":"A. Mary Barclay","value":"A. Mary Barclay","hits":1},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=A.+Mary+Barclay\u0026view=compact"}},{"attributes":{"label":"A. Z. Lopez-Penha","value":"A. Z. Lopez-Penha","hits":2},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=A.+Z.+Lopez-Penha\u0026view=compact"}},{"attributes":{"label":"Abraham Cahan","value":"Abraham Cahan","hits":1},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=Abraham+Cahan\u0026view=compact"}},{"attributes":{"label":"Albert Bigelow Paine","value":"Albert Bigelow Paine","hits":2},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=Albert+Bigelow+Paine\u0026view=compact"}},{"attributes":{"label":"Aleister Crowley","value":"Aleister Crowley","hits":2},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=Aleister+Crowley\u0026view=compact"}},{"attributes":{"label":"Alexander Singleton","value":"Alexander Singleton","hits":1},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=Alexander+Singleton\u0026view=compact"}},{"attributes":{"label":"Alfred F. Goldsmith","value":"Alfred F. Goldsmith","hits":1},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=Alfred+F.+Goldsmith\u0026view=compact"}},{"attributes":{"label":"Alfred Kreymborg","value":"Alfred Kreymborg","hits":1},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=Alfred+Kreymborg\u0026view=compact"}}]},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/facet/names_ssim.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"facet","id":"level_ssim","attributes":{"label":"Level","items":[{"attributes":{"label":"Collection","value":"Collection","hits":2},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Blevel%5D%5B%5D=Collection\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026view=compact"}},{"attributes":{"label":"Item","value":"Item","hits":119},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Blevel%5D%5B%5D=Item\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026view=compact"}},{"attributes":{"label":"Series","value":"Series","hits":3},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Blevel%5D%5B%5D=Series\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026view=compact"}},{"attributes":{"label":"Sub-series","value":"Sub-series","hits":5},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Blevel%5D%5B%5D=Sub-series\u0026f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026view=compact"}}]},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/facet/level_ssim.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"search_field","id":"all_fields","attributes":{"label":"All Fields"},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026search_field=all_fields\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"search_field","id":"keyword","attributes":{"label":"Keyword"},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026search_field=keyword\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"search_field","id":"name","attributes":{"label":"Name"},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026search_field=name\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"search_field","id":"place","attributes":{"label":"Place"},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026search_field=place\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"search_field","id":"subject","attributes":{"label":"Subject"},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026search_field=subject\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"search_field","id":"title","attributes":{"label":"Title"},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026search_field=title\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"search_field","id":"container","attributes":{"label":"Container"},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026search_field=container\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"search_field","id":"identifier","attributes":{"label":"Identifier"},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026search_field=identifier\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"sort","id":"score desc, title_sort asc","attributes":{"label":"relevance"},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026sort=score+desc%2C+title_sort+asc\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"sort","id":"date_sort asc","attributes":{"label":"date (ascending)"},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026sort=date_sort+asc\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"sort","id":"date_sort desc","attributes":{"label":"date (descending)"},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026sort=date_sort+desc\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"sort","id":"creator_sort asc","attributes":{"label":"creator (A-Z)"},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026sort=creator_sort+asc\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"sort","id":"creator_sort desc","attributes":{"label":"creator (Z-A)"},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026sort=creator_sort+desc\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"sort","id":"title_sort asc","attributes":{"label":"title (A-Z)"},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026sort=title_sort+asc\u0026view=compact"}},{"type":"sort","id":"title_sort desc","attributes":{"label":"title (Z-A)"},"links":{"self":"https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog.json?f%5Bnames%5D%5B%5D=William+Rose+Ben%C3%A9t\u0026page=9\u0026sort=title_sort+desc\u0026view=compact"}}]}