Conrad Aiken
American novelist and poet (1889–1973)
Conrad Potter Aiken (August 5, 1889 – August 17, 1973) was an American writer and poet, honored with a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and was United States Poet Laureate from 1950 to 1952. His published works include poetry, short stories, novels, literary criticism, a play, and an autobiography.
Biography
Early years
Aiken was the eldest son of William Ford and Anna (Potter) Aiken, daughter of noted Unitarian preacher William James Potter of New Bedford, Massachusetts. In Savannah, his father became a respected physician and eye surgeon. For the first eleven years of Aiken's life, his family lived at 228 East Oglethorpe Avenue in Savannah.
On February 27, 1901, Aiken's father murdered his mother, and then committed suicide. According to his 1952 autobiography, Ushant, Aiken, then 11 years old, heard the two gunshots and discovered the bodies immediately thereafter. After his parents' deaths, he was raised by his great-aunt and uncle in New Bedford between 1901 and 1902, then in Cambridge by his aunt, Grace Aiken Tillinghast and her husband, Will, a librarian at Harvard University. He attended Middlesex School, then Harvard.
At Harvard, Aiken edited the Advocate with T. S. Eliot, who became a lifelong friend, colleague, and influence.
The public source identifies “Conrad Aiken” as american novelist and poet (1889–1973). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Conrad, Aiken and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q380645. VIAF identifies the subject as 71433883. The Library of Congress control number is n80060447. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1889, 1973, 1950 and 1952.
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This entry incorporates text from “Conrad Aiken” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.