The following year, Miller revised A View from the Bridge as a two-act prose drama. In 1956, a one-act version of Miller’s verse drama, A View from the Bridge, opened on Broadway in a joint bill with one of Miller’s lesser-known plays, A Memory of Two Mondays. The Crucible, in which Miller likened the situation with the House Un-American Activities Committee to the witch hunt in Salem in 1692, opened on Broadway in 1953. In 1952, Miller traveled to Salem, Massachusetts, to research the witch trials of 1692. Within six weeks, he completed the rest of the play. There, in less than a day, he wrote Act I of Death of a Salesman. In 1948, Miller built a small studio in Roxbury, Connecticut. In 1946, Miller’s play, All My Sons, was a success on Broadway and his reputation as a playwright was established. In 1940, Miller wrote The Man Who Had All the Luck, which was produced in New Jersey in 1940 and won the Theatre Guild’s National Award. After graduation, he began working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard while continuing to write radio plays, some of which were broadcast on CBS. In 1937, Miller wrote Honors at Dawn, which also received the Avery Hopwood Award. Miller switched his major to English and subsequently won the Avery Hopwood Award for No Villain. It was during this time that he wrote his first play, No Villain. After graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School, he worked at several menial jobs to pay for his college tuition.Īt the University of Michigan, Miller first majored in journalism and worked as a reporter and night editor for the student paper, The Michigan Daily. Miller was born in Harlem, New York City, the second of three children of Isidore and Augusta Miller, Polish-Jewish immigrants. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as: All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953) and A View from the Bridge (one-act, 1955 revised two-act, 1956). Arthur MillerĪrthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915-February 10, 2005) was an American playwright and essayist. Source: Bibliography Press your browser’s BACK button to return to the previous page. Millay was found dead at the bottom of the stairs in her house on Octoit was clear she fell to her death but the cause of the fall is unknown. She was the sixth recipient of that honor and the second woman. In 1943, she was awarded the Frost Medal for her lifetime contribution to American poetry. She was the first woman to be so honored for poetry. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 for The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems. It was at this time that she first attained great popularity in America. In New York, she lived in a number of places in Greenwich Village, including a house owned by the Cherry Lane Theatre that was renowned for being the smallest in New York City. The poem was so widely considered the best submission that, when it was ultimately placed fourth, it was quite a scandal for which Millay received much publicity. Millay’s career and celebrity began in 1912 when she entered her poem “Renascence” into a poetry contest in The Lyric Year. Nicholas, The Camden Herald and, significantly, the anthology, Current Literature, all by the age of 15. Millay preferred to be called “Vincent” rather than Edna, which she found plain.Īt Camden High School, Millay began nurturing her budding literary talents, starting at the school’s literary magazine, The Megunticook, and eventually having some of her poetry published in the popular children’s magazine, St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York, where her uncle’s life had been saved just prior to her birth.Ĭora taught her daughters to be independent and to speak their minds, which did not always sit well with the authority figures in Millay’s life. Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, to Cora Lounella, a nurse, and Henry Tollman Millay, a schoolteacher who would later become superintendent of schools. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work. She was also known for her unconventional, bohemian lifestyle and her many love affairs. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892-October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright and the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.