possibility of self-renewal, commenting, “I believe that eventually my work will be seen as a whole, all the poems and all the novels, as the expression of a vision of life which, though unfashionable all the way, has validity.” The surge of interest in her work at the end of the twentieth century, particularly among feminist scholars, would seem to confirm Sarton’s hopes.

Although May Sarton considered herself to be first of all a poet, she is also well known for her fiction and her journals and autobiographical writings. Her first novel, The Single Hound (1938), received critical acclaim for its sensitive portrayal of the relationship between a troubled young writer and the elderly woman who serves as his mentor. Alluding to Emily Dickinson’s image of the soul attended by “a single hound—/ Its own identity,” this novel’s title suggests a central theme of Sarton’s fiction: the struggle of a vulnerable individual, often an artist, for creative autonomy and self-knowledge.

Important subsequent novels include Faithful Are the Wounds (1955), a work based loosely on the events surrounding the suicide of the Harvard English professor and author F. O. Matthiessen; The Small Room (1961), an exploration of teacher-student relationships in a New England women’s college; and Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing (1965), a fictional rendering of Sarton’s poetic theory through the reminiscences of the poet-protagonist Hilary Stevens. Three later novels treat with sensitivity the problems of aging: Kinds of Love (1970), As We Are Now (1973), and A Reckoning (1978). Sarton continued to publish novels until 1989, with the last being The Education of Harriet Hatfield.

Sarton also contributed significantly to the genre of women’s autobiography. In I Knew a Phoenix: Sketches for an Autobiography (1959) she focuses on her relationship with her parents, her early education, and her theatrical endeavors and travels during the 1930’s. A sequel, Plant Dreaming Deep (1968), tells of Sarton’s later life, specifically her purchase of the country house in New Hampshire that for years provided a “life-restoring silence” that nourished her art. Journal of a Solitude (1973), one of Sarton’s best-known works, explores further the importance of solitude for the writer who would “break through . . . to the matrix itself,” thus coming to terms with her art and herself. Subsequent journals, The House by the Sea (1977) and Recovering (1980), deal with the poet’s move to the coastal home in Maine, and with her struggle toward “valuing myself again” after professional disillusionment and a bout with breast cancer. At Seventy (1984), After the Stroke (1988), and At Eighty-two (1996) attest her determination to continue writing daily and living fully despite the exigencies of aging and ill health.

In addition to her novels and journals, Sarton published A World of Light: Portraits and Celebrations (1976), vignettes which profile, among others, the writers Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Bowen. Sarton’s articles on writing and on rural life appeared in a variety of periodicals, including The Writer, The Christian Science Monitor, and Family Circle.

May Sarton was among the most prolific and versatile of modern American writers. During a career that spanned more than six decades, she published many novels, volumes of poetry, works of nonfiction, and children’s books. With the exception of the period during World War II, she produced virtually a book a year. Much of Sarton’s popular acclaim came through her novels and journals, which inspired hundreds of letters from readers moved by her painstaking accounts of her solitary existence or by her frank treatment of aging—of friendship, sexuality, and anger among the elderly; of dying with dignity.

She received many grants and fellowships throughout her career, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry (1954), a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholarship (1959-1960), a Danforth Visiting Lectureship (1960-1961), and a National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities grant (1967). Honorary degrees flowed from more than a dozen American colleges and universities, as did numerous prizes and awards: the New England Poetry Club Golden Rose (1945), the Bland Memorial Prize awarded by Poetry magazine (1945), the Reynolds Prize from the American Poetry Society (1953), The Johns Hopkins University’s Poetry Festival Award (1961), the Emily Clark Balch Prize (1966), the Sarah Josepha Hale Award (1972), the Alexandrine Medal from the College of St. Catherine (1975), a Ministry to Women Award from the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Federation (1982), an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation (1985), a Maryann Hartman Award from the University of Maine (1986), a lifetime achievement award from the Women’s Building/West Hollywood Connexxus Women’s Center (1987), the Northeast Author Award from the Northeast Booksellers’ Association (1990), and the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine (1993).

Although Sarton has been labeled—sometimes pejoratively—an “old-fashioned” poet, a “sentimental” novelist, and a “lesbian writer,” her work is far richer and more varied than such categorizations would suggest. Universal themes pervade her writing: the power of friendship and passionate love, the unique bond between parent and child, the quest for identity and inner order, the responsibility of art and the artist in modern society, the conflicts of the elderly. Sarton is also concerned with the unique dilemma of the female artist, who struggles to be both woman and writer in a male-oriented society. Her exploration of the woman poet’s relationship to her creativity, found primarily in Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing and in her poems and journals, is perhaps Sarton’s most significant literary contribution.