Conrad Aiken was born on August 5, 1889, in Savannah, Georgia. When he was eleven years old, Aiken found his parents dead in his home–his father shot his mother dead and then killed himself. The boy went to live with a great-great-aunt in Concord, Massachusetts. He attended Middlesex School and served as the editor of the newspaper as well as a member of the tennis and baseball teams. In 1907, Aiken entered Harvard University. There, he edited The Advocate with T. S. Eliot and took classes with other future great writers, including E. E. Cummings. Aiken and Eliot, who was one year ahead of Aiken in school, often influenced and critiqued each other’s poetry. This interaction had a profound impact on their writings.

After his graduation in 1912 Aiken married Jessie McDonald, with whom he had three children. Two years later he published his first poetry collection, Earth Triumphant, and worked as a contributing editor for the literary magazine, Dial. … [in 1930, Aiken won the Pulitzer Prize for his Collected Poems (1929)] …He dodged military service during World War I by claiming that, as a poet, he was a part of the “essential industry.” He and his family moved frequently between the States and England and, during the 1920s, Aiken published several collections of poetry, including Priapus and the Pool (1922), as well as short horror stories and prose. He also worked as a reporter for various periodicals and edited a collection of Emily Dickinson’s poems, published in 1924.
He tutored English at Harvard in 1927 and, two years later, divorced his wife. Several months later, in 1930, Aiken won the Pulitzer Prize for his Collected Poems (1929), and that same year married Clarissa Lorenz. He wrote and published mostly short story collections during the 1930s, including Among the Lost People (1934) and, seven years later, he and Lorenz divorced.

Aiken married Mary Hoover in 1937 and moved to England until World War II, when the couple returned to America. Eventually, after a few more international relocations, the Aikens settled in Massachusetts. In 1950, the poet was named Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress until 1952. He continued to write and publish throughout his later life, and was awarded generously for his innovative poetry. Fascinated with psychology, Poe, and French Symbolists, Aiken’s poems are very introspective, best witnessed in the masterful interior monologues that decorate not only his verses but also his short stories and “third-person” autobiography, Ushant (1952).

Aiken and Hoover remained married until Aiken’s death at their summer house in Savannah, Georgia, on August 17, 1973.