Stephen Vincent Benét was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He attended Yale University and published two works of poetry while there, until civilian military service forced him to put his studies on hold for a year. He graduated in 1919, after submitting a third book of poetry as a substitute for a thesis. In 1921 he published his first novel, The Beginning of Wisdom, and traveled to Paris in order to study at the Sorbonne. He returned in 1923 with Rosemary Carr, his new wife. Benét continued to write not just poetry, but novels, short stories, even an opera libretto. He is best known for his epic about the Civil War, John Brown’s Body, which won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1929.