Elinor Wylie was born in New Jersey and grew up in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., the child of a prominent family. As an adult she became poetry editor of Vanity Fair and a contributing editor to The New Republic. The poems often combine exquisite craft with a powerful sense of isolation, sometimes with an aura of death. Their precision also bears comparison with imagist practice, especially with some of Amy Lowell’s and H.D.’s early poetry. After a series of heart attacks, Wylie died of a stroke at age forty-three.