Mina Loy

Image credit: Poets.org

Mina Loy
1882-1966

British poet and visual artist.

Major works

• Songs to Joannes, Others, 3 (April 1917); republished as Love Songs, edited by Roger L. Conover (Northampton, Mass.: Aphra Press, 1981).
• “Feminist Manifesto” (penned in 1914, published posthumously)
• The Last Lunar Baedeker (edited by Roger L. Conover)
  • collection of her poetry (as well as selections of prose, segments of interviews, and photographs of her artwork)
• Stories and Essays of Mina Loy (edited by Sara Crangle)
  • collection of her stories and essays

Known associates

• Djuna Barnes
• Arthur Cravan
• Jane Heap
• Ezra Pound
• Gertrude Stein

Further reading

• Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy (Carolyn Burke; Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; 1996)
  • This detailed biography brings to light the life of one of modernism’s more obscured figures. Burke chronicles Loy’s life and the impact of her work.
• Mina Loy: Woman and Poet (Maeera Shreiber and Keith Tuma, editors; National Poetry Foundation, 1998)
  • This collection of scholarly essays focuses on criticism of Loy’s work, initially marginalized in academic analyses of Modernist figures. It features an extensive annotated bibliography of Loy’s own work, not to be missed for anyone writing on her, given the dispersed nature of her publications.

Primary sources

• The Yale Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library has a collection relating to Loy, the Mina Loy papers: the collection overview page provides a brief biography and a description of the papers. Here is a gallery of digitized sketches, artwork, notes, drafts, and the like from the collection. You can narrow your search parameters (by language, genre, type of resource, etc) using the sidebar at the right.