Archibald Macleish

Archibald MacLeish was a man of many talents. He was very intelligent and took on many different jobs throughout his life. From his poetry to political status, the world knew who he was. Attorney, writer, and statesman, Archibald MacLeish made his impact on the world in multiple ways.

MacLeish was born May 7, 1892, in Glencoe, Illinois (Archibald MacLeish). He was the son of Andrew MacLeish, a dry-goods merchant, and Martha Hillard, a college professor. Growing up, he spent most of his childhood years on a seventeen-acre estate along Lake Michigan. Since he was such a rebellious child, his mother decided that the discipline of a private school was the best fit for him. He, therefore, attended Hotchkiss from 1907 to 1911, and from 1911 to 1915 he studied at Yale University. There he majored in English, wrote poetry, and was highly involved in campus literary, social, and athletic activities. MacLeish graduated from Yale and entered Harvard Law School in the fall of 1915 (Barber).

In 1916 during the month of June, Archibald MacLeish married Ada Taylor Hitchcock. Together, they had four children, but only three survived infancy (Barber). Two years after his marriage, MacLeish volunteered as an ambulance driver, and later became a captain of field artillery during World War I (E). MacLeish soon became embittered toward the war when his brother Ken, a fighter pilot, died in combat. After being called back to the States, MacLeish returned to Harvard Law School and graduated head of his class in 1919 (Barber).

Soon after graduation, MacLeish began teaching law courses in Harvard’s government department but turned down an offer to teach at Harvard Law School. From there he worked as an editor for the New Republic and then joined a Boston law firm (B). MacLeish was a successful lawyer, but he found that his work distracted him from writing. He resigned from the law firm in 1923; the same day he was offered a partnership (E). MacLeish announced his commitment to poetry in the summer of 1923 when he and his family packed up and moved into a fourth-floor flat on the Boulevard St. Michael in Paris (A).

In France, MacLeish and Ada joined the literary community, befriending writers such as E. E. Cummings, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and Earnest Hemingway. Not long after, Hemingway and MacLeish began a long and close though difficult friendship that would last for years (B). Some would say the move to Paris was Archibald MacLeish’s first and only major period of his poetic career (A).

MacLeish published his first volume of poetry, Tower of Ivory, in 1917 shortly after he left for war (A). After moving to France, he published four books: The Happy Marriage and Other Poems, The Pot of Earth, Streets in the Moon, and The Hamlet of A. MacLeish (E). Upon returning to America in 1928 and settling in Conway, Massachusetts, “MacLeish began researching for his epic poem Conquistador by travelling the steps and