Biography Sarah Teasdale
- Time Period1884 - 1933
- PlaceMissouri
- CountryUnited States
Poet Biography
Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1884 January 29, 1933), was an American lyrical poet. She was born Sarah Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis, Missouri.
Throughout her life, Teasdale suffered poor health and it was only at age 9 that she was well enough to begin school. In 1898 she went to Mary Institute and to Hosmer Hall in 1899 where she finished in 1903.
In 1913 Teasdale fell in love with poet Vachel Lindsay. He wrote her daily love letters, but nevertheless she married Ernst Filsinger in 1914 when she was 30; he was a rich businessman. Teasdale and Lindsay remained friends throughout their lives.
In 1918, her poetry collection Love Songs won three awards: the Columbia University Poetry Society prize, the 1918 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and the annual prize of the Poetry Society of America. She was not happy in her marriage, becoming divorced in 1929. In 1933, she committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. Her friend Lindsay had committed suicide two years earlier.
The poem There Will Come Soft Rains from her 1920 collection Flame and Shadow inspired and featured in a famous short story of the same name by Ray Bradbury.
In 1994, she was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
She is interred in the Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.
