A Marianne Moore Chronology
Darlene Williams Erickson
1887: Born 15 November in Kirkwood, Missouri
1894: Family moves to Carlisle, Pennsylvania (age 7)
1896: Begins preparatory education at Metzger Institute, Carlisle (age 8)
1905: Finishes high school; enters Bryn Mawr College (age 17)
1909: Receives A.B.; enrolls at Carlisle Commercial College (age 21)
1910: Completes commercial courses (age 22)
1911: First visits with her mother to England and Paris during the summer; begins teaching commercial subjects at U.S. Industrial Indian School, Carlisle (age 23)
1915: First poems appear in the Egoist (London), Poetry (Chicago), and Others (New York) (age 27-28)
1916: Moves to Chatham, New Jersey, where she and her mother keep house for her brother, John Warner Moore, pastor of Ogden Memorial Church (age 28)
1918: Moves with mother to New York City; works as a secretary and private tutor in a girls’ school (age 30-31)
1921: Publication of Poems by Egoist Press (England); takes part-time job in Hudson Park Branch of New York Public Library (age 33-34)
1924: Dial Press publsihes Observations and awards her $2000 in recognition of "unusual literary value" (age 36-37)
1925: Becomes acting editor of the Dial magaaazine (age 37)
1926: Assumes job as editor of the Dial (age 38)
1928: First poem to be translated, "A Grave," appears in Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie (age 40)
1929: The Dial ceases publication; she and her mother move to Brooklyn; devotes full time to writing (age 41)
1935: Brings out Selected Poems, introduced by T.S. Eliot (age 47)
1936: The Pangolin and Other Verse (age 48)
1941: What Are Years (age 53)
1944: Nevertheless (age 56)
1945: Rock Crystal: A Christmas Tale, by Adalbert Stifter, translated by Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore; receives Guggenheim Fellowship (age 57)
1947: Elected to national Institute of Arts and Letters; mother dies. During the period she begins wearing the tricorner hat and cape as her personal trademark (her mother had fashioned the first cape in 1905, and she had worn a cape in college). (age 59)
1949: Wilson College confers Litt.D., first of sixteen honorary degrees from American colleges and universities (age 61)
1951 Collected Poems published; receives a Pulitzer Prize and national Book Award (age 63)
1953: Visiting Lecturer at Bryn Mawr College, which gives her M. Carey Thomas award; Collected Poems wins Bollingen Prize. Brooklyn’s Youth United for a Better Tomorrow selects her as one of the six most successful women of the year (age 65)
1954: Gedichte, bilingual edition of her poetry, published in Germany; the translation of Fables of La Fontaine is published (age 66)
1955: Predelictions, selected essays and reviews, is published; elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (age 67)
1956: Like a Bulwark (age 68)
1959: O to Be a Dragon (age 71)
1961: A Marianne Moore Reader (age 73)
1962: National Institute of the Arts and Letters observes her seventy-fifth birthday; Brandeis University awards her a prize and medal for outstanding achievement in poetry; The Absentee (age 75)
1963: Puss in Boots, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty retold (age 75)
1964: The Arctic Ox. Festschrift for Marianne Moore’s Seventy-Seventh Birthday, by Various Hands, and Omaggio a Marianne Moore are published (age 77)
1965: Moves to Manhattan; Tell Me, Tell Me appears (age 78)
1967: Complete Poems published; receives Edward MacDowell Medal and Poetry Society of America’s Gold Medal; receives the Croix de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres (age 79)
1968: Wins national Medal for Literature; throws out first baseball of the season at Yankee Stadium (age 80)
1969: Named "Senior Citizen of the Year" in New York Conference on Aging; receives honorary degree, her last, from Harvard (age 81)
1970: Publishes final poems, "The Magician’s Retreat" and "Prevalent at One Time"; becomes semi-invalid (age 82-83)
1972: Dies 5 February in New York City (age 84)
1981: The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore, definitive edition, with the author’s final revisions.
1986: The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore
from Illusion Is More Precise Than Precision: The Poetry of Marianne Moore. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1992. Copyright © 1992 by The University of Alabama Press.
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