American poet Edna St Vincent Millay was BOTD in 1892. Born in Rockland, Maine, she had a turbulent childhood after her father abandoned the family, living in poverty before moving in with an aunt. She began publishing poetry in her teens, winning a national competition when she was 20. Sponsored by a wealthy patron, she attended Vassar College (which she dubbed “a hell-hole”) and had several relationships with women, including actress Edith Wynne Matthison. After graduating, she moved to New York City, immersing herself in the Bohemian milieu of Greenwich Village. Her first male lover, Floyd Dell, told her it was his duty to “rescue” her from her homosexuality. Her 1920 poetry collection A Few Figs From Thistles – beginning with the line “My candle burns at both ends” – was controversial for its exploration of female sexuality and feminist themes. Millay undertook a national tour, making highly successful public readings of her work. After a wild sojourn in Paris, where she had an affair with sculptor Thelma Wood and became pregnant to a man named Daubigny, she returned to America, where her mother helped her induce an abortion. In 1923, she became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver. Later that year, she married Eugen Boissevain, a man twice her age. They settled in upstate New York, and had an open marriage, living like “two bachelors” and pursuing affairs with others. She also wrote the libretto for the opera The King’s Henchman, premiering in 1927 to great acclaim. During the 1930s, she lost a manuscript in a fire, which she rewrote from memory, and developed a morphine addiction after injuries sustained in a car accident. During World War Two, she abandoned poetry to join the pacifist and anti-fascist movements. After Boissevain’s death in 1949, her alcoholism worsened. She died in 1950, breaking her neck after falling down a flight of stairs. She was 58. Her work fell out of fashion after her death, but was rediscovered during the 1970s feminist movement. She is now considered one of America’s greatest poets. She was played by actress Jennifer Lines in the 2009 documentary Burning Candles: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay.