Edward Estlin Cummings, who was also known as E. E. Cummings, e. e. Cummings, and e e Cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, and several essays. He is often regarded as one of the most important American poets of the 20th century. Cummings is associated with modernist free-form poetry. Much of his work has idiosyncratic syntax and uses lower-case spellings for poetic expression.
Edmund Charles Blunden was an English poet, author, and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was also a reviewer for English publications and an academic in Tokyo and later Hong Kong. He ended his career as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature six times.
Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel, was a French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement.
William Rose Benét was an American poet, writer, and editor. He was the older brother of Stephen Vincent Benét.
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell was a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells. She reacted badly to her eccentric, unloving parents and lived much of her life with her governess. She never married but became passionately attached to Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew, and her home was always open to London's poetic circle, to whom she was generous and helpful.
Elinor Morton Wylie was an American poet and novelist popular in the 1920s and 1930s. "She was famous during her life almost as much for her ethereal beauty and personality as for her melodious, sensuous poetry."
Stanley Jasspon Kunitz was an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000.
Harriet Monroe was an American editor, scholar, literary critic, poet, and patron of the arts. She was the founding publisher and long-time editor of Poetry magazine, which she established in 1912. As a supporter of the poets Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, H. D., T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg, Max Michelson and others, Monroe played an important role in the development of modern poetry. Her correspondence with early twentieth century poets provides a wealth of information on their thoughts and motives.
Clifford Lea Bax was a versatile English writer, known particularly as a playwright, a journalist, critic and editor, and a poet, lyricist and hymn writer. He also was a translator. The composer Arnold Bax was his brother, and set some of his words to music.
Alice Christiana Gertrude Meynell was a British writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet.
Blanche Marie Louise Oelrichs was an American poet, playwright and theatre actress. Oelrichs first used the masculine pen name Michael Strange to publish her poetry in order to distance her society reputation from its sometimes erotic content, but it soon became the name under which she presented herself for the remainder of her life.
Genevieve Taggard was an American poet.
William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite was an African-American writer, poet, literary critic, anthologist, and publisher in the United States. His work as a critic and anthologist was widely praised and important in the development of East Coast poetry styles in the early 20th century. He was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1918.
Eunice Tietjens was an American poet, novelist, journalist, children's author, lecturer, and editor.
Florence Van Leer Earle Nicholson Coates was an American poet, and women's rights advocate whose prolific output was published in many literary magazines, some of it set to music. She was mentored by the English poet Matthew Arnold, with whom she maintained a lifelong friendship. She was famous for her many nature poems, inspired by the flora and fauna of the Adirondacks, where she lived. She was also an advocate for women and equality. She would be elected poet laureate of Pennsylvania by the state Federation of Women's Clubs in 1915.
Pearl London (1916–2003) was an American supporter of literary arts and teacher of poetry in New York City.
Mitchell Dawson was a Chicago writer and lawyer, known for his poetry, patronage of the arts, and legal columns. He was born in Chicago into an artistic family. His brother, Manierre Dawson was an abstract painter. Like his father, George Ellis Dawson, Mitchell became a lawyer after studying at the University of Chicago Law School in 1913. He practiced law with his father's firm until his retirement in 1954.
Marion Emily Angus (1865–1946) was a Scottish poet who wrote in the Scots vernacular or Braid Scots, defined by some as a dialect of English and others as a closely related language. Her prose writings are mainly in standard English. She is seen as a forerunner of a Scottish renaissance in inter-war poetry – her verse marks a departure from the Lallans tradition of Robert Burns towards that of Hugh MacDiarmid, Violet Jacob and others.
Stanley McCrory Pargellis was an American historian and librarian. His work as a historian focused mainly on the military history of the American colonial era. From 1942 to 1962, he was director of the Newberry Library in Chicago.
Agnes Lee was an American poet and translator.
