Mary Carolyn Davies

by George J. Dance

Mary Carolyn Davies (1888-1940?). Courtesy Second Hand Songs.

Mary Carolyn Davies (1888-1940?) was an American poet and prose writer.

Life

Davies was born in Sprague, Washington, January 1, 1888.

She moved to Portland, Oregon in 1900.

In 1911 she entered the University of California, Berkeley, where she won the Bohemian Club prize and the Emily Cook Prize for Poetry as a freshman; but dropped out after a year.

She moved to New York City, where she supported herself by hack literary work, while also writing poetry in her spare time.

Her earliest book was published in 1918. Soon after, she moved back to Oregon and married Leland Davis (a marriage which ended in divorce). During the 1920's she published in magazines that included Collier’s, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, McClure’s, and Poetry, and in prominent anthologies like the Bookman Anthology of Verse and Modern American Poetry. She was elected president of the Women's Press Club of Oregon in 1920, and president of the Northwest Poetry Society in 1924.

In 1930 she moved back to New York, and published little in the following decade. In 1940 the Oregonian reported that she was destitute; the paper's poetry editor visited her in New York, and found her living in a "deplorable state." There is no record of her death.

Recognition

In 1912 Davies became the 1st woman to win the Bohemian Club Prize for poetry.

Publications

Poetry

• Songs. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1913.
• The Drums in Our Street: A book of war poems. New York: MacMillan, 1918.
• Youth Riding: Lyrics. New York: Macmillan, 1919.
• The Skyline Trail: A book of western verse. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1924.
• Penny Show. New York: H. Harrison, 1927.
• Street-Lamp Apples, and other poems. New York: Works Progress Administration, 1936.

Play

• The Slave with Two Faces: An allegory in one act. New York: Egmont Arens, 1918; Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2004.

Novel

• The Husband Test. Philadelphia, PA: Penn Publishing, 1921.

Juvenile

• A Little Freckled Person: A book of child verse. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1919.
• The Merry Children's Book of Play. New York & London: Funk & Wagnalls, [192-?]

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Cloistered Mary Carolyn Davies Audiobook Short Poetry

Poems by Mary Carolyn Davies

1. The Last of the Cowboys

See also

• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• Mary Carolyn Davies profile & poem ("Songs of a Girl") at the Academy of American Poets
• "If I Had Known"
• Mary Carolyn Davies in The New Poetry: An anthology: "Cloistered," "Songs of a Girl"
• Mary Carolyn Davies at the Poetry Foundation
• Mary Carolyn Davies in Poetry: A magazine of verse, 1912-1922: "Cloistered," "The Death Watch," "Intuition," "Sun Prayer," "Wind Prayer," "The Grapes," "Dusk," "A Girl's Songs," "In the Middle West," "Sea Gulls," "The Apple Tree Said," "I Pray You," "Portrait of a House," "The Last of the Cowboys"

Books

• Works by Mary Carolyn Davies at Project Gutenberg
• Mary Carolyn Davies at Amazon.com

Audio / video

• Mary Carolyn Davies poems at YouTube

About

• Mary Carolyn Davies at the Oregon Encylopedia
• Mary Carolyn Davies at the Greenwich Village Bookshop Door

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