Amy Lowell was born Feb. 9, 1874, in Brookline Mass. She spent a somewhat solitary childhood and loved to read. She confided to her diary as a teen, "I should like best of anything to be literary." And literary she was.
She was frequently published in Atlantic Monthly and published four volumes of poetry between 1916 and 1921, edited three anthologies of imagist poetry and wrote two volumes of critical analysis. Her last work was a biography of Keats.
She became a literary celebrity. She was quite eccentric; a short, overweight, flamboyant woman, spoke in a loud voice, kept her hair in a bun, wore a pince-nez and constantly smoked cigars. She was the center of attention wherever she went and in great demand as a lecturer.
The story is told that once when her motor car broke down somewhere in Boston she informed the police officer assisting her that her brother, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, would be responsible for removing and fixing her auto. When called, at Harvard, where he was president, he said he was not sure it was his sister and asked the officer for a description. He said she was wearing high boots, foot propped up, sitting on a stone wall smoking a cigar. Lowell, taking a deep breath and rolling his eyes, said yes, that certainly had to be his sister!
