Conrad Aiken Biography and List of Works

American poet, short story writer, critic and novelist. Most of Aiken's work reflects his intense interest in psychoanalysis and the development of identity. As editor of Emily Dickinson's Selected Poems (1924) he was largely responsible for establishing that poet's posthumous literary reputation. From the 1920s Aiken divided his life between England and the United States, playing a significant role in introducing American poets to the British.

"All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, that's now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny and by."
(from 'All Lovely Things Will Have an Ending')

Conrad Aiken was born in Savannah, Georgia. In his childhood Aiken experienced a considerable trauma when he found the bodies of his parents after his physician father had killed his mother and committed suicide. He was brought up in Massachusetts from the age of eleven by a great-great-aunt.

Before entering Harvard Aiken was educated at private schools and at Middlesex School, Concord. In Harvard he shared a class with T.S. Eliot, with whom he edited the Advocate and whose poetry was to influence his own. Aiken graduated in 1912, in the same era as Eliot, Walter Lippman, Van Wyck Brooks, and E.E. Cummings. After working as a reporter, Aiken devoted himself entirely to writing, having also a small private income. Of the many influences Aiken acknowledged, the writings of Freud, Havelock Ellis, William James, Edgar Allan Poe, and the French Symbolists are evident in his work. Freud considered Aiken's GREAT CIRCLE (1933) a masterpiece of analytical introspection.

Aiken's first collection of verse, EARTH TRIUMPHANT, appeared in 1914 and made him known as a poet. He was a contributing editor to Dial, which led to a friendship with Ezra Pound. Aiken's essays, collected in SCEPTICISMS (1919) and A REVIEWER'S ABC (1958), dealt with the questions provoked by his commitment to literature as a mode of self-understanding.

During the First World War Aiken claimed that he was in an 'essential industry' because of being a poet, and was granted an exemption for this reason.

Aiken's adult life was marked by trans-Atlantic journeys. In 1921 he moved from Massachusetts to England, settling in Rye, Sussex. In 1927-28 he was a tutor in English at Harvard. He married Clarissa M. Lorenz in 1930 (divorced in 1937). In 1933 he sailed again for Boston, and then spent two years in Rye (1934-36), writing 'London Letters' to the New Yorker. He returned to New York and Boston, and travelled in Mexico, where he married the artist Mary Hoover. They returned to Rye in 1937, but moved to the United States after the outbreak of World War II.

"Walk with me world, upon my right hand walk,
speak to me Babel, that I may strive to assemble
of all these syllables a single word
before the purpose of speech is gone."
(from 'This image or another')

In 1930 Aiken was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his collection SELECTED POEMS. Most of Aiken's fiction was written between the 1920s and '30s, among others novels BLUE VOYAGE (1927), in which he used interior monologue, KING COFFIN (1934), and short story collections BRING! BRING! (1925) and AMONG THE LOST PEOPLE (1934).

After staying two years in Rye, Aiken settled in 1947 in Brewster, Massachusetts. He was a consultant in poetry at the Library of Congress from 1950 to 1952. In 1953 he published COLLECTED POEMS, which included the masterwork 'Preludes to Definition' and 'Morning Song of Senlin'. Aiken's 'autobiographical narrative' USHANT (1952) depicted his friendships with Malcolm Lowry, Eliot and other figures he knew. It dramatized the attempt of its protagonist, the author's persona, to read the palimpsest of hieroglyphs that constitutes the landscape of his soul, and mingled sketches of the literary generation between the wars with psychoanalytic free association.

From 1962 on Aiken wintered in a Savannah house adjacent to that of his childhood. He died in Savannah on August 17, 1973. Aiken received a Pulizer Prize, National Book Award, Bollinger Prize in 1956, Gold Medal in Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1958, and the National Medal for Literature in 1969.

Aiken's psychological penetrations and verbal richness never received the wide recognition they deserved in spite of the several awards the author received. Posthumously published THE SELECTED LETTERS OF CONRAD AIKEN (1978) contains correspondence with such literary colleagues as Wallace Stevens, Harriet Monroe, and Edmund Wilson.

Aiken was married three times. His daughter from the first marriage with Jessie McDonald, Joan Aiken, has also gained fame as a writer. She was born in Sussex in 1924 and educated at home before entering school at the age of 12. Aiken has been a prolific writer, having produced more than 30 books for adults and over 60 for children. Her first collection of short stories for children, All You've Ever Wanted appeared in 1953. Other works include: The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962), Black Hearts in Battersea (1964), The Silence of Herondale (1964), A Necklace of Raindrops (1968), Midnight is a Place (1974), The Shadow Guests (1980), The Cuckoo Tree (1981), The Way to Write for Children (1982), Mansfield Revisited (1984), Deception (1987), Blackground (1989), Jane Fairfax (1990), Morningquest (1992), Eliza's Daughter (1994), The Winter Sleepwalker (1994), Cold Shoulder Road (1995), The Cockatrice Boys (1996), and The Jewel Seed (1997). In her works Joan Aiken has combined elements from fairy tales, history, horror, the supernatural, and adventure.

For further reading: Aiken: A Life of His Art by Jay Martin (1962); Aiken: A Bibliography (1902-1978) by F.W. and F.C. Bonnell (1982); Lorelei Two: My Life with Aiken by Clarissa M. Lorenz (1983); Conrad Aiken by Edward Butsche (1988); Aiken: Poet of White Horse Vale by Edward Butscher (1988); The Art of Knowing: The Poetry and Prose of Conrad Aiken by H. Martin (1988); Conrad Aiken, Our Father by Joan Aiken and Jane Aiken Hodge (1989); Aiken: A Priest of Consciousness, ed. by Ted R. Spirey and Arthur Waterman (1989); The Fictive World of Conrad Aiken by C.F. Seigel (1993)

Books by Conrad Aiken