author

Elizabeth Atkins

1891–1962

A Nebraska-born poet, critic, and novelist, she moved easily between creative writing and literary study. Her work includes poetry, fiction, and a well-known book on Edna St. Vincent Millay, showing a writer equally at home with imagination and close reading.

1 Audiobook

The Poet's Poet : essays on the character and mission of the poet as interpreted in English verse of the last one hundred and fifty years

The Poet's Poet : essays on the character and mission of the poet as interpreted in English verse of the last one hundred and fifty years

by Elizabeth Atkins

About the author

Mary Elizabeth Atkins was born in Sterling, Nebraska, on October 20, 1891, and died in Los Angeles, California, on December 19, 1962. Nebraska Authors identifies her as an author of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and biography, and notes that she was also known as Elizabeth Atkins.

She studied extensively in Nebraska, earning a bachelor's degree from Nebraska Wesleyan University in 1912, then a master's degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska. The same source says she taught English and later served as an assistant professor of English at the University of Minnesota.

Her listed books include Poet's Poet (1922), Edna St. Vincent Millay and Her Times (1936), and Holy Suburb (1941). Taken together, those titles suggest a career that ranged from poetry and criticism to biography and fiction, with a strong interest in modern literary life.