American poet James Merrill was BOTD in 1926. Born in New York City to a wealthy banking family, he had a privileged upbringing, attending private schools in New York and holidays at his father’s country estate. He began writing in his teens, and attended Amhurst College, before being drafted into the US Army during World War Two. He returned to Amhurst after the war, having an affair with his professor Kimon Friar, and published his First Poems in 1951. His play The Bait was performed in New York in 1953. Celebrity audience members who walked out included Arthur Miller and Dylan Thomas. Among those who stayed was the writer and artist David Jackson – he and Merrill became lovers, remaining together for 30 years. Merrill gained wider public appreciation when his 1966 collection With Nights and Days won the National Book Award in Poetry. In his subsequent collections The Fire Screen and Braving the Elements, he developed a witty, intimate and colloquial voice, focusing on poignant moments in his romantic and domestic life. He won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Divine Comedies, an ambitious epic poem based on Merrill’s transcribed conversations with the spirit world by means of an Ouija board. Its 1978 sequel Mirabell: Books of Number won a second National Book Award, establishing Merrill as one of the foremost American poets of his generation. Divine Comedies, Mirabell and a third collection Scripts for the Pageant were republished in 1982 as a single volume, The Changing Light at Sandover. Merrill was also a significant philanthropist, establishing the Ingram Merrill Foundation in the 1950s to provide financial support to artists, including the filmmaker Maya Deren and the poet Elizabeth Bishop. His poetic output slowed in the 1980s following his separation from Jackson. His 1993 memoir A Different Person provided a frank account of his life, relationships and gay life in pre-Stonewall era America. Merrill died in 1995 of an AIDS-related illness, aged 68, survived by his partner Peter Hooten.