Alice Duer Miller

Alice Duer Miller (July 28, 1874 - August 22, 1942) was an American poet and novelist.

Alice Duer Miller (1874-1942) circa 1920. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Life

Youth and family

Alice Duer was born in New York City on July 28, 1874 into a wealthy family. She was the daughter of Elizabeth Wilson Meads and James Gore King Duer. Elizabeth was the daughter of Orlando Meads of Albany, New York.

Alice's great grandfather was William Alexander Duer, who was the president of Columbia College, 1829–1842. Her great-great grandfather, was William Duer, an American lawyer, developer, and speculator from New York City. He had served in the Continental Congress and the convention that framed the New York Constitution. In 1778, he signed the United States Articles of Confederation.

Her great-great-great grandfather was William Alexander, who claimed the disputed title of Earl of Stirling, and was an American Major-General during the American Revolutionary War.

She was also a descendant of Senator Rufus King, who was an American lawyer, politician, and diplomat. He was a delegate for Massachusetts to the Continental Congress. He also attended the Constitutional Convention and was a signer of the United States Constitution on September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He represented New York in the United States Senate, served as Minister to Britain, and was the Federalist candidate for both Vice President (1804, 1808) and President of the United States (1816)

Career

At the time of Alice Duer's entrance into society, her family lost most of its fortune. She entered Barnard College in 1895 studying mathematics and astronomy. She helped to pay for her studies by selling novels and short essays. She and her sister Caroline King Duer published a joint book of poems. Alice graduated in June 1899.

On October 5, 1899, she married Henry Wise Miller, at Grace Church Chapel in New York City. He was born in 1877, the son of Lt. Commander Jacob Miller, in Nice, France, where his father was serving with the U.S. Navy. He was an 1892 graduate of Harvard University. They left for Costa Rica, where he attempted to develop rubber cultivation. This venture eventually failed; in 1903, she, her husband and young son returned to New York, where they lived in difficulty for some time, he working in the Stock Exchange, she teaching, which she hated. After a time, her husband earned more and she was able to dedicate her working time entirely to writing.

She became known as a campaigner for women's suffrage and published a brilliant series of satirical poems in the New York Tribune. These were published subsequently as Are Women People?. These words became a catchphrase of the suffrage movement. She followed this collection with Women are People! (1917).

As a novelist, she scored her first real success with Come Out of the Kitchen in 1916. The story was made into a play and later the 1948 film Spring in Park Lane. She followed it with a series of other short novels, many of which were staged and (increasingly) made into films. At about the same time, her husband began to make money on the Exchange and their money problems were over.

Her marriage endured to the end of her life, but was not entirely tranquil. Her verse novel Forsaking All Others (1933), about a tragic love affair, which many consider her greatest work, reflects this, though it is certainly not autobiographical.

In the 1920s and 1930s, many of her stories were used for motion pictures, such as Are Parents People? (1925), Roberta (1935), and Irene (1940), taking her to Hollywood. She also became involved in a number of motion picture screenplays, including Wife vs. Secretary (1936). Her name appears in the premiere issue of The New Yorker as an "advisory editor".

Miller died in 1942, and was interred at Evergreen Cemetery in Morristown, New Jersey.

Writing

The White Cliffs

In 1940, she wrote the verse novel The White Cliffs. The story is of an American girl who comes to London as a tourist, and meets and marries a young upper-class Englishman in the period just before the First World War. The War begins and he goes to the front. He is killed just before the end of the War, leaving her with a young son. Her son is the heir to the family estate. Despite the pull of her own country and the impoverished condition of the estate, she decides to stay and live the traditional life of a member of the English upper class. The story concludes as The Second World War commences and she worries that her son, like his father, will be killed fighting for the country he loves. The poem ends with the lines:

...I am American bred

I have seen much to hate here - much to forgive,

But in a world in which England is finished and dead,

I do not wish to live.

The poem was spectacularly successful on both sides of the Atlantic, selling almost 700,000 copies in its first four years - an unheard-of number for a book of verse. (The website AliceDuerMiller.com claims total sales of over 1 million.) The poem was broadcast, and the story was made into the 1944 film The White Cliffs of Dover, starring Irene Dunne. Like her earlier suffrage poems, it had a significant effect on American public opinion and it was one of the influences leading the United States to enter the War. Sir Walter Layton, who held positions in the Ministries of Supply and Munitions during the Second World War, brought it to the attention of then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Publications

Poetry

• Poems (with Caroline King Duer). New York: G.H. Richmond, 1896.
• Are Women People?: A book of rhymes for suffrage times. 1915.
• Women Are People! New York: Doran, 1917.
• Wings in the Night. New York: Century, 1918.
• Forsaking All Others (verse novel). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1931; London: Allan, 1933.
• The White Cliffs (verse novel). New York: Coward-McCann, 1940.
• Selected Poems. New York: Coward-McCann, 1949; London: Methuen, 1949.
• An Unauthorized Interview: Between the suffragists and the Statue of Liberty. Martinsville, IN: Helaine Victoria Press, 1977.

Plays

• The Charm School: A comedy in three acts (with Robert Milton). New York: Samuel French, 1922.
• The Springboard: A comedy in three acts. New York: Samuel French, 1928; Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street, 2004.
• Unauthorized Interviews. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2007.

Novels

• The Modern Obstacle. New York: Scribner, 1903.
• Calderon's Prisoner. New York: Scribner, 1903.
• Less than Kin. New York: Holt, 1908.
• The Blue Arch. New York: Scribner, 1910.
• Things. New York: Scribner, 1914.
• The Burglar and the Blizzard: A Christmas story. New York: Hearst's International Library, 1914.
• Come Out of the Kitchen!: A romance. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1916; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1916.
  • also published as Honey. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1929.
• Ladies Must Live. New York: Century, 1917.
• The Charm School. New York & London: Harper, 1919.
• The Happiest Time of Their Lives. New York: Century, 1918; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1919.
• The Beauty and the Bolshevist. New York & London: Harper, 1920.
• Manslaughter. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1921; London: Leonard Partsons, 1922.
• The Priceless Pearl. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1924.
• The Reluctant Duchess. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1925.
• Welcome Home. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1928.
• The Prince Serves His Purpose. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1929.
• Taxi. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1931.
• Green Isle: A novel. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1930; London: Philip Allan, 1935.
• The Bishop's Nephew. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1932.
• Gowns by Roberta. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1933; London: Philip Allan, 1934.
• The Rising Star (1935)
• Death Sentence. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1935; London: Philip Allan, 1936.
• Five Little Heiresses. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1936; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1936.
• Not for Love. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1937.
• And One Was Beautiful. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1938; London: Methuen, 1942.
• Never to Marry / The Reluctant Duchess. London: Methuen, 1943.

Short fiction

• Are Parents People? New York: Dodd, Mead, 1924.
• Instruments of Darkness, and other stories. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1925.
• Come Out of the Pantry. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1934; London: Philip Allan, 1936.
• Hit and Run. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1943; London: Methuen, 1947.

Non-fiction

• Barnard College: The first fifty years. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939.
• I Have Loved England. New York: Putnam, 1941.

Collected editions

• Summer Holiday: A selection of the novels and stories of Alice Duer Miller. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1941.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

In A School Chapel (Alice Duer Miller Poem)

• List of U.S. poets

References

• Prominent Families of New York New York: BiblioBazaar, 2009. ISBN 1-115-37230-0.
• Burstyn, Joan N. Past and promise: lives of New Jersey women, Syracuse University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8156-0418-1.

External links

Poems

• "Before Spring"
• Poems by Alice Duer Miller at ReadBookOnLine.net
• Alice Duer Miller at PoemHunter (48 poems)
• Early poems

Books

• Works by Alice Duer Miller at Project Gutenberg
• Alice Duer Miller at Amazon.com

About

• Alice Duer Miller at Thoughtco
• Alice Duer Miller Official website
• Alice Duer Miller at IMDb
•  “The White Cliffs”: Literature and War in the Days of Radio

Etc.

• Prominent Families of New York. New York: BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2009 ISBN 1-115-37230-0.