LOWELL, AMY (1874-1925), American poet, critic and lecturer, was born on Feb. 9, 1874 in Brookline, Mass., a sister of Abbott L. and Percival Lowell. She came of a line of public spirited lawyers and men of affairs, who for three generations had been, like herself, lovers and planters of gardens. She received her education from her mother, who was an accomplished musician and linguist, and from private schools. Later she travelled abroad. After her father's death in 19oo she occupied herself with muni cipal affairs, until "about 1902," she writes, "I discovered that poetry . . . was my natural mode of expression. And from that moment I began to devote myself to it seriously." But she pub lished nothing until 1910, when her first published poem appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. Her first volume, A Dome of Many Col oured Glass, is dated 1912. Thereafter her books followed each other in rapid succession: Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds (1914) ; Six French Poets: Studies in Contemporary Literature (1915) ; Men, W omen and Ghosts ( 916) ; Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (1917) ; Can Grande's Castle (1918) ; Pictures of the Floating World (1919) ; Legends (1921) ; Fir-Flower Tablets (1921), with Florence Ayscough; A Critical Fable (1922) ; John Keats (1925) ; What's o'Clock (1925); East Wind (1926) and Ballads For Sale (1927). During all this period Miss Lowell con tributed critical articles to various magazines and frequently lec tured. In 1920 she received the degree of Litt.D. from Baylor uni versity. She had suffered from a serious malady for years, and on the eve of a visit to England, during which she was to have lectured at Oxford, Cambridge, Eton, Edinburgh and elsewhere, it became acute, and she died suddenly on May 12, 1925, at Brookline, Mass.
Miss Lowell, during her later years, was the most striking figure in contemporary American poetry. Her vivid and powerful per sonality, her intellectual vigour and independence and her zest in life gave her a conspicuous and in some respects a unique position. She was an acknowledged leader of the group in America and England which called itself the Imagists. But through all her radicalism ran a strong conservative strain, and she never aban doned conventional verse forms, nor for some years before her death had she been affiliated with any school. Among her contri butions to poetry must be reckoned the perfecting, in her best work, of the technique of "free" verse ; her almost unrivalled com mand of the vocabulary of sensuous impressions ; the wide range of the themes to which she has given poetical expression, and the clarity and restrained beauty of many of her shorter poems. Her most important critical work, the result of long and devoted labour, is the biography of Keats, which essays to reinterpret him as "a new generation of poets and critics" regards him.