Wallace James Stevens was born on October 2nd, 1879, in Reading, Pennsylvania. His father, a lawyer, sent Wallace to Harvard as a non-degree special student, after which he moved to New York City and worked briefly as a journalist. From there he attended New York Law School and graduated in 1903. On a trip home to Reading in 1904 Stevens met Elsie Viola Kachel, a saleswoman, milliner, and stenographer. After working for several New York law firms, he was hired in January 1908, as a lawyer for the American Bonding Company. After a 6-year courtship Wallace and Elsie married in 1909 over the objections of his parents. For Wallace it was a seismic event; he never spoke to his father again. By 1914 Wallace had become the vice-president of the New York office of the Equitable Surety Company of St. Louis, Missouri. In 1916 he joined Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company and they moved to Hartford. His work was full time and time for his poetry writing was in short supply. From January 1922 he made several business several visits to Key West, Florida. "The place is a paradise," he wrote to Elsie, "midsummer weather, the sky brilliantly clear and intensely blue, the sea blue and green beyond what you have ever seen." In 1923 ‘Harmonium’ was published. At last, at age 38, he was an overnight success. His career was not prodigious in quantity but its quality was exceptional. In March 1955 Wallace underwent various medical tests and an operation which resulted in a diagnosis of stomach cancer. He travelled in early June to receive honorary Doctorates at Hartford and Yale. Wallace was readmitted on July 21st to St. Francis Hospital where his condition deteriorated. Wallace Stevens died on the 2nd August 1955 at the age of 75. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems in 1955.
Author
Wallace Stevens is a rare example of a poet whose main output came at a fairly advanced age. His first major publication (four poems from a sequence entitled "Phases" in the November 1914 edition of Poetry Magazine) was written at the age of thirty-five, although as an undergraduate at Harvard, Stevens had written poetry and exchanged sonnets with George Santayana, with whom he was close through much of his life. Many of his canonical works were written well after he turned fifty. According to the literary critic Harold Bloom, who called Stevens the "best and most representative" American poet of the time, no Western writer since Sophocles has had such a late flowering of artistic genius. Stevens attended Harvard as a non-degree special student, after which he moved to New York City and briefly worked as a journalist. He then attended New York Law School, graduating in 1903. On a trip back to Reading in 1904 Stevens met Elsie Viola Kachel; after a long courtship, he married her in 1909. In 1913, the young couple rented a New York City apartment from sculptor Adolph A. Weinman, who made a bust of Elsie. A daughter, Holly, was born in 1924. She later edited her father's letters and a collection of his poems. After working for several New York law firms from 1904 to 1907, he was hired on January 13, 1908 as a lawyer for the American Bonding Company. By 1914 he had become the vice-president of the New York Office of the Equitable Surety Company of St. Louis, Missouri. When this job was abolished as a result of mergers in 1916, he joined the home office of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company and left New York City to live in Hartford, where he would remain for the rest of his life.
