Wylie, Elinor

Wylie, Elinor (Morton Hoyt) (1885–1928) poet, writer; born in Somerville, N.J. She attended private schools and was a debutante. After leaving her first husband, she went off to England with Horace Wylie (1910–14); on returning to America, they were married in 1915. In 1921, she left Wylie and moved to New York City where in 1923 she married William Rose Benét. All of her writing was published in the final seven years of her life. She is best known today for her delicate poetry, as in Angels and Earthly Creatures (1929), but, in addition, for her critical essays, reviews, and four published novels; all the latter were comic fantasies; two—The Orphan Anvil (1926) and Mr. Hodge and the Hazard (1928)—drew on her fascination with Percy Bysshe Shelley.