May Sarton (1912 - 1995)

Genre: Non-Fiction, Poetry, Children's Literature, General Fiction

Sarton was born Eleanor Marie Sarton in Wondelgem, Belgium, on 3 May 1912 and emigrated to the U.S. with her family in 1916, settling in Massachusetts. Sarton lived in New Hampshire as an adult, moving to York, Maine, in 1973, where she lived until the end of her life, on 16 July 1995. A comprehensive Sarton bibliography is found on the Celebration of Women Writers page, as is a biographical sketch. Poetry magazine produced a lengthy article on Sarton in March 2000, and Sojourner's magazine provides a short death notice.

In 1997 Margot Peters came out with a biography of Sarton, called simply May Sarton. Maine poet Constance Hunting has also edited two books about Sarton, May Sarton, Woman and Poet (1982) and A Celebration for May Sarton: Essays and Speeches from the National Conference 'May Sarton at 80' (1994).

A May Sarton Bibliography:

Novels:

• The Single Hound (?/1991),
• The Bridge of Years (1946/1985),
• Shadow of a Man (1950/1982),
• A Shower of Summer Days (1952/1995),
• Faithful Are the Wounds (1955/1997),
• The Birth of the Grandfather (1957/1989),
• The Fur Person (1957/1983),
• The Small Room (1961/1976),
• Joanna & Ulysses (?/1987),
• The Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing (1965/1993),
• Miss Pickthorn & Mr. Hare (1968),
• The Poet & the Donkey (1969/1996),
• Kinds of Love (1970/1994),
• As We Are Now (1973/1992),
• Crucial Conversations (1975/1994),
• A Reckoning (1978/1997),
• Anger (1982/1996),
• The Magnificent Spinster (1985/1995),
• The Education of Harriet Hatfield (1989/1993)

Poetry:

• Encounter in April,
• Inner Landscape,
• The Lion & the Rose,
• The Land of Silence,
• In Time Like Air,
• Cloud Stone Sun Vine,
• A Private Mythology (?/1996),
• As Does New Hampshire (1967),
• A Grain of Mustard Seed (1971/1987),
• A Durable Fire (1972),
• Collected Poems 1930-1973 (1974),
• Selected Poems of May Sarton (1978),
• Halfway to Silence (1980),
• Letters from Maine: Poems (1984/1997),
• The Silence Now (1988/1990; includes earlier uncollected poems as well as new poems),
• Collected Poems 1930-1993 (1993),
• Coming into Eighty: New Poems (1994/1997)

Books for Children:

• Punch's Secret (1974),
• A Walk Through the Woods (1976)

Non-Fiction & Anthologies:

• I Knew A Phoenix: Sketches for an Autobiography (1959/1996),
• Plant Dreaming Deep (1968/1996),
• Journal of a Solitude (1973/1992),
• A World of Light: Portraits & Celebrations (1976/1988),
• The House by the Sea (1977/1996),
• Recovering: A Journal (1980),
• Writings on Writing (1980),
• May Sarton--A Self-Portrait (1982),
• At Seventy: A Journal (1984/1993),
• Letters to May (1986; by Eleanor Mabel Sarton),
• After the Stroke: A Journal (1988/1990),
• Honey in the Hive: Judith Matlack 1898-1982 (1988),
• Conversations with May Sarton (1991), ed. Earl Ingersoll
• Sarton Selected: An Anthology of the Journals, Novels, and Poems of May Sarton (1991),
• Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year (1992/1996),
• May Sarton: Among the Usual Days: A Portrait, Unpublished Poems, Letters, Journals, and Photographs (1993; ed. Susan Sherman),
• Encore: A Journal of the Eightieth Year (1993),
• From May Sarton's Well: Writings of May Sarton (1994/1999),
• At Eighty-Two: A Journal (1996/1997),
• Selected Letters: 1916-1954 (Vol 1) (1997),
• Dear Juliette: Letters of May Sarton to Juliette Huxley (1999)

Last Update: 04/27/2008

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