Virginia Hamilton Adair (February 28, 1913,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

– September 16, 2004, Claremont,

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

) was an American

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

who became famous later in life with the 1996 publication of ''Ants on the Melon''.

Background

Mary Virginia Hamilton was born in

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

and raised in

Montclair, New Jersey Montclair () is a township in Essex County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Situated on the cliffs of the Watchung Mountains, Montclair is a wealthy and diverse commuter town and suburb of New York City within the New York metropolitan area. As ...

."Adair, Virginia Hamilton (1913–2004)." '' Dictionary of Women Worldwide: 25,000 Women Through the Ages'', edited by Anne Commire and Deborah Klezmer, vol. 1, Yorkin Publications, 2007, p. 7. ''Gale eBooks''. Accessed 14 Sept. 2021. She attended

Montclair Kimberley Academy Montclair Kimberley Academy (MKA) is a co-educational private school for students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade located in Montclair in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. One of New Jersey's largest independent day schools, ...

, graduating in the class of 1929. She disliked the name "Mary" and dropped it as a young adult. Adair composed her first poem at the age of two; after that, she wrote over a thousand poems. Exposed to poetry as a young child through her father, she began writing her own poems regularly at age six.

Fox, Margalit Margalit Fox (born 1961) is an American writer. She began her career in publishing in the 1980s, before switching to journalism in the 1990s. She joined the obituary department of ''The New York Times'' in 2004, and authored over 1,400 obituarie ...

"Virginia Hamilton Adair, 91, a Poet Famous Late in Life, Dies"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', September 18, 2004. Accessed November 21, 2007. More than seventy were published in journals and major magazines, such as the ''Atlantic'' and the ''New Yorker''. She received her B.A. in English from

Mount Holyoke College Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United States. ...

in 1933 and her M.A. from

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

. Later she was

professor emerita ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona, CPP, or Cal Poly"Cal Poly" may also refer to California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo in San Luis Obispo. See the '' name'' section of this article for more info ...

Pomona, California Pomona is a city in Los Angeles County, California. Pomona is located in the Pomona Valley, between the Inland Empire and the San Gabriel Valley. At the 2020 census, the city's population was 151,713. The main campus of California State Polyte ...

where she taught from 1957 to 1980.

Career

Though she published work during the 1930s and 1940s in '' Saturday Review'', ''

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

'', and ''

The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hum ...

'', Adair did not publish again for almost 50 years. There were several factors which preoccupied her over those decades and took her attention away from publishing her own work. These included her 1936 marriage to prominent historian

Douglass Adair Douglass Greybill Adair (March 5, 1912 – May 2, 1968) was an American historian who specialized in intellectual history. He is best known for his work in researching the authorship of disputed numbers of ''The Federalist Papers'', and his influe ...

, motherhood (she had three children), and an academic career. She was also soured on publishing her work due to her distaste for the gamesmanship of the publishing world. Adair's return to publishing came in the 1990s, following her husband's 1968 suicide, her retirement from teaching, and her loss of sight from

glaucoma Glaucoma is a group of eye diseases that result in damage to the optic nerve (or retina) and cause vision loss. The most common type is open-angle (wide angle, chronic simple) glaucoma, in which the drainage angle for fluid within the eye rem ...

. Adair's friend and fellow poet

Robert Mezey Robert Mezey (February 28, 1935 – April 25, 2020) was an American poet, critic and academic. He was also a noted translator, in particular from Spanish, having translated with Richard Barnes the collected poems of Borges. He was born in Philadel ...

forwarded some of her work to

Alice Quinn Alice may refer to: * Alice (name), most often a feminine given name, but also used as a surname Literature * Alice (''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland''), a character in books by Lewis Carroll * ''Alice'' series, children's and teen books by ...

, ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

s poetry editor. ''The New Yorker'' published the work in 1995, and the subsequently published "Ants on the Melon". Adair's work then appeared regularly in ''The New Yorker'' and ''

The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...

''.

Works

* ''Beliefs and Blasphemies'' * ''Ants on the Melon''

References

External links

Virginia Hamilton Adair Collection at the Cal Poly Pomona University Library
* ttp://www.identitytheory.com/poetry/vanlenten1.html Interview {{DEFAULTSORT:Adair, Virginia Hamilton 1913 births 2004 deaths American women poets California State Polytechnic University, Pomona alumni Mount Holyoke College alumni Glascock Prize winners Radcliffe College alumni Montclair Kimberley Academy alumni People from Montclair, New Jersey California State Polytechnic University, Pomona faculty 20th-century American poets 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women