Edwin Denby

The modernist poet, dancer, and critic Edwin Denby (1903–1983) was born in Tientsin, China, and spent his childhood in Shanghai before moving to Vienna and later Detroit. Initially interested in psychoanalysis, he attended Harvard and the University of Vienna before studying modern dance at the Hellerau-Laxenburg School in Vienna. He performed as a company dancer for several years, returning to the United States in 1936. That same year he wrote Horse Eats Hat in collaboration with Orson Welles, an adaptation of the 1851 French comedy The Italian Straw Hat. He then began his career as a dance critic by writing for Modern Music magazine from 1936 to 1942, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1948 for his scholarship. He is the author of the poetry collections In Public, In Private (1948), Mediterranean Cities (1956), Snoring in New York (1974), The Complete Poems (1986), and Dance Writings and Poetry (1998).