Amy Lowell (February 9, 1874-May 12, 1925) was an American poet of the imagist school, who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. Lowell was born to a prominent Massachusetts family. One brother, Percival Lowell, was a famous astronomer, who predicted the existence of the planet Pluto; another brother, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, served as President of Harvard University. She herself never attended college because it was not deemed proper for a woman, but she compensated for this with her avid reading, which became near-obsessive book-collecting. She lived as a socialite and travelled widely, turning to poetry in 1902 after being inspired by a performance of Eleonora Duse in Europe. Her first published work appeared in 1910 in Atlantic Monthly. The first published collection of her poetry, A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass, appeared two years later.
Lowell was an imposing figure, who dressed in clothing considered manly, kept her hair cropped short, and wore a pince-nez. She smoked cigars constantly, claiming that they lasted longer than cigarettes. A glandular problem kept her perpetually overweight, so that Pound once commented that she was a “hippopoetess.” Her writing also included critical works on French literature and a biography of John Keats.
Lowell died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1925. The following year, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for What’s O’Clock. Forgotten for years, there has been a resurgence of interest in her work because of its focus on lesbian themes and her collection of love poems addressed to Ada Dwyer Russell.