Born in Redding, PA, in 1879, Wallace Stevens attended Harvard as an undergraduate and took his law degree from New York Law School. He was employed at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co. in Connecticut where he eventually became vice president in 1934. In 1914 Stevens had his poetry published for the first time; Harriet Monroe included four of his poems in a wartime issue of Poetry. Though critics largely ignored his first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923), the collection includes many of Stevens’s most admired poems, including “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and “The Emperor of Ice Cream.” In spite of the early dismissal of his work, by the 1950s, Stevens was considered to be one of America’s great 20th century poets. Stevens lived a quiet life in Hartford, Connecticut, writing during his off time and while walking to and from his office. He died in 1955.