Rating: 
Summary: fascinating!!
Review: Even though I'm not a nympho or a poetic genius, I could identify with her by the end of the book. Mrs. Milford did a good job with the information at her disposal. Now, I want to read Zelda!!!
Rating: 
Summary: was she a poet?
Review: for a biography about a poet there is precious little discussion of her poetry in here. occasionally how many printings were sold, what she got paid, yes - but what about her journals? how did she write them? her inspiration? what other poets did she like? was she influenced by other things, like music or theatre or prose? if so, what? none of this is in here. to me it's a more a sensationalized soap opera of millay's life, & yes of course she lived a sensational life - she was a feminist & a poet! - but what of it? what is interesting about millay is not that she was oversexed or addicted - but that while being both she produced some of the most intelligent AND sentimental poetry in US literary history. there is a section that describes how she won't allow the producer of her play to change her title "the king's henchmen" to "the king's messenger," & the reason give astounded me: that she had used ONLY anglo-saxon words that were in usage during the 12th century, when the play was set. does this not point out the woman was an intellectual heavyweight? that she did her research? because she wrote poems littered with classical allusions that were about love & sex, does that mean she wasn't an intellectual? this tires me. a woman biographer belittling a woman poet. when on earth will anyone figure out that millay was a brilliant woman, learned & lettered, & footnote her allusions & references instead of her lovers? when will some acadamic come forward to show that millay could do what eliot did except she sold books of poetry to people who didn't otherwise read poetry! it reminds me of the old joke about ginger rogers: she could do everything fred astaire did, but backwards & in heels. i know edna millay, the poet, was a brilliant woman, a serious artist, & a heavyweight intellectual. from this biography i learn instead she was oversexed, addicted, & wrote letters in childish language to her mother. i had such hopes. decades of male artists & critics have belittled millay's poetry on two accounts: 1) that it was popular, and 2) that it was about love & sex. milford, i'm ashamed to say, has written a biography that belittles her life in the same way, when really, it is about time someone - someone! - take edna millay, her life AND her art, seriously.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: I had no idea Ms. Millay had led such a fascinating and tumultuous life. This is wonderfully written and not at all dry like you'd expect.
Rating:
Summary: At Both Ends
Review: I knew next to nothing about the lady, except having heard of her as a roaring 20's icon. I even thought the author was one of the famous Mitford sisters, so I checked out Savage Beauty at my library. As biography, I don't see how it could be much better. This was a flaming creature who, like a comet, blazed her way across the literary firmament, then fizzled out and died, in a typical 20's denouement. I'm glad to have read it, and my hat's off to Ms. MILFORD for her authoritative and engaging work. I never was, and still am not, a reader of poetry, and I found the Millay verses rather heavy going. I doubt I'll read much more by her. She appealed to me more as a historical literary figure than someone I took pleasure in reading.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Book
Review: I love this book. Beautifully written -- an amazing life.Hard to put down.
Rating: 
Summary: Her candle burned at both ends
Review: I raced through the first half of this book, thinking it was a real page-turner. Then I read some of the Amazon reviewers' comments and began to read more critically. In the photo section is a picture with the caption "Pregnant on the fields and downs of Dorset, 1921." Maybe I read the first part too fast, but I don't recall anything about a pregnancy. Two photos share the caption "Recovering from her operation on the porch of Eugen's house in Croton." What was the operation for? Did I miss that, too? There is a hint that Millay's mother, Cora, may have had affairs during the periods when she left her three daughters alone. Did she, or didn't she? Not a fan of promiscuity, I found Millay's many affairs tawdry in the extreme. The drugs and alcohol were also unpleasant to read about. Apparently, the drugs were for serious pain Millay suffered, but it was never clear to me what was causing her pain. Millay's life seemed to go along at a white hot pace until near its end, when the candle extinguished itself rapidly, just as her poem says.
Rating:
Summary: unfulfilling
Review: i started this book with little or no knowledge of millay, except that the critical stance on her poetry changes more often than the weather. after enjoying ZELDA, i looked forward to some insight to millay's character. it isn't there. among the objectionable-to-me points: milford is apparently masterful with the early years of poverty, isolation and abandonment, but towards the end of the biograghy, when reviewing two works and quoting cora millay, edna's mother, milford suggests there may have been incidents involving outsiders when the three children were left alone for weeks, or that cora's life might not have been as entirely celibate as presented at first. this seems to me either dishonest reporting or extremely bad organization. also, in several places, milford allows quotations from friends' writings and interviews to stand without explanation or support. do these statements reflect a groundless personal malice, provable truth, or something else? milford does not explain. although milford had the chance to interview people who had known edna personally, including her sister, norma, and norma's husband, charles ellis (a painter), the book contains, to me, far to little information from these people. in fact, one statement by charles ellis, which is not expanded, is so revealing of aspects of character not touched upon that i was shocked that milford did not adress the subject further. however, this is still a worthwhile biography, and i would have liked to add a half star. millay was a multi-talented, creative artist who led a life that would be hard to present in a novel, one that was literally rags-to-riches, and in which she enjoyed more luck and support than any dozen other people. having read a great deal of and about the algonquin circle, i was not surprised by the life-style (though i would like to know if millay ever met parker).
Rating: 
Summary: Bitterly disappointed
Review: I write biographies of dead poets based primarily on secondary sources, and I have read hundreds of biographies by other authors, two-thirds of which are written by academics. Only my need for the research material compels me to finish these books, as in the present case. Ms. Milford allegedly has spent thirty years studying the "papers" of Vincent Millay -- journals, diaries, and correspondence -- and like so many other biographers she seems determined that each scrap of paper she has read will find a way into her book. Her selectivity of sources -- crucial in biography -- isn't flawed; it's nonexistant. There is at least one long blocked quotation from this material on every page; sometimes as many as three; and sixty percent of the rest of the text is enclosed in quotation marks. The reading of the text gives me a migrane. It is like driving down a city street where there's a speed bump every ten feet. When compared with the likes of Irving Stone's biography of Jack London or Carlos Baker's biography of Earnest Hemingway, Ms. Milford's seem simply pitiful. Only professional writers should be allowed to write biographies; academics usually wind up disserving the dead. I had planned at one time to read her biography of Zelda Fitzgerald but have since changed my mind.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant, beautiful Edna
Review: If you actually read this book, and devote all of your attention to it as you read, you will find it is totally, incredibly good. I'm reading it now and I'm partcularly fond of the letters from Edna to her mother and the letters from her husband to her. Plus her life was really quite amazing!!! This is one book I will be very sad to finish. The one problem for me was that the book was written with the help of Norma Millay, Vincent's sister, and I think she still withheld a lot of letters and photos and it's a shame we can't see it all. But don't worry, it's still an ecellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, beautiful Edna
Review: If you actually read this book, and devote all of your attention to it as you read, you will find it is totally, incredibly good. I'm reading it now and I'm partcularly fond of the letters from Edna to her mother and the letters from her husband to her. Plus her life was really quite amazing!!! This is one book I will be very sad to finish. The one problem for me was that the book was written with the help of Norma Millay, Vincent's sister, and I think she still withheld a lot of letters and photos and it's a shame we can't see it all. But don't worry, it's still an ecellent book.
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