The son of wealthy and educated parents, Trumbull Stickney led a cosmopolitan life in Europe before attending Harvard College. While still a freshman, he was chosen to help edit the prestigious Harvard Monthly. His first poems were published in the magazine and clearly show his interest in classical Greek literature. After graduating, Stickney traveled to Paris and studied at the Sorbonne, becoming the first American to receive the university’s degree of Doctorat es Lettres. Unhappy in academia, he returned to Harvard to teach and died just a year later, at the age of 30. Though he was well versed in classical Greek literature, in his own poetry Stickney displays the divisions of a modern consciousness. Highly emotional and technically daring, Stickney’s small body of work influenced later poets such as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.