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Biographies Conrad Aiken

U.S. Consultant in Poetry, 1950-1952


Conrad Aiken, U.S. Consultant in Poetry, 1950-1952. Photo credit: Clarence LePeer.

Conrad Aiken was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1889. A poet, fiction writer, and essayist, Aiken published 33 collections of poetry, including Selected Poems (1929), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Collected Poems (1953), which won the National Book Award; and Collected Poems 1916-1970 (1970). From 1950-1952, Aiken served as Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress. His other honors included the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, the Gold Medal in Poetry from the American Academy of the Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Medal for Literature. In 1924, Aiken edited Emily Dickinson’s Selected Poems, the first English edition of her work. He died in 1973.

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Selected Works at the Library of Congress

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