Amy Lowell
An American poet who used her formidable wealth and force of personality to champion the sharp, clear imagery of the Imagist movement.
1874–1925 (age 51)·American poet·Birthday: February 9·The Gilded Age
Biography
Amy Lowell won the Pulitzer Prize posthumously for her 1925 collection 'What's O'Clock.' Born into a Boston Brahmin fortune in 1874, she smoked cigars and wrote poetry that broke from tradition. She discovered Ezra Pound and the Imagists in her late thirties, then threw herself into the movement with vigor. She bankrolled its publications and promoted its aesthetic of hard, clear language and free verse. Her own work ranged from early collections like 'Sword Blades and Poppy Seed' to an ambitious biographical study of John Keats. She toured the country giving dramatic readings. Her untimely death at age 51 cut short a life of relentless literary activism. The Pulitzer confirmed her centrality to modern American poetry. She was a figure of contradictions: a wealthy heir who became a revolutionary.
The Gilded Age
1860–1882
Born during or after the Civil War, they built industrial America — the railroads, the steel mills, the first skyscrapers. An era of massive wealth, massive inequality, and the belief that the future belonged to whoever could build it fastest.
Amy was born in 1874, placing them squarely in The Gilded Age. The events that shaped this generation — world wars, depression, and rapid industrialization — shaped the world they entered and the choices available to them.
#1 When Amy Was Born
The biggest hits of 1874
Amy's Life & Times
The world at every milestone
1874Born
President: Ulysses S. Grant
1879Started school
President: Rutherford B. Hayes
1887Became a teenager
President: Grover Cleveland
1890Could drive
Wounded Knee massacre marks the end of the Indian Wars
President: Benjamin Harrison
1892Could vote
President: Benjamin Harrison
1895Turned 21
First public film screening by the Lumiere brothers
President: Grover Cleveland
1904Turned 30
New York City opens its first subway line
President: Theodore Roosevelt
1914Turned 40
World War I begins
President: Woodrow Wilson
1924Turned 50
First Winter Olympics held in Chamonix, France
President: Calvin Coolidge"It Had to Be You" — Isham Jones
1925Died at 51
The Scopes Trial debates evolution in schools
Home: $4,366President: Calvin Coolidge"Sweet Georgia Brown" — Ben Bernie
Key Achievements
- Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry posthumously in 1926 for her collection 'What's O'Clock'.
- Became a leading promoter and practitioner of Imagist poetry in the United States after 1913.
- Published a major two-volume biography of the poet John Keats in 1925.
- Delivered popular and influential public lectures on modern poetry across the United States.
Did You Know?
She was the sister of Abbott Lawrence Lowell, the president of Harvard University.
She was known for smoking strong cigars, a habit that defied early 20th-century conventions for women.
She never married, and her long-term companion was the actress Ada Dwyer Russell, who is the subject of many of her love poems.
She engaged in a famous and public feud with Ezra Pound, who sarcastically dubbed the Imagist movement under her influence 'Amygism'.
“All books are either dreams or swords.”
