Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1897 - August 2, 1955) was born into a prosperous family in Reading, Pennsylvania, attended Harvard and then graduated from the New York Law School in 1903.  He married Elsie Katchel in 1909 after a long courtship against the objections of his family, which resulted in a permanent estrangement.  A bust of Elsie by their landlord, sculptor Adolph Einman, became the model for the Mercury dime and perhaps the Walking Liberty Half Dollar. He practiced law at carious firms before working as corporate counsel for insurance companies, eventually joining the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company as vice-president in 1916, where he worked for the rest of his life. Few people at the company knew of his world-wide reputation as a poet. 

In 1922 Stevens visited Key West on business and found a paradise to which he would return regularly and that served as an important influence in his later work.  He reportedly argued with Robert Frost on two occasions at the Casa Marina and was knocked into the street by Ernest Hemingway after picking a fight with him at a party.

Stevens increasingly came to be seen as a key figure in 20^th century poetry and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1955. He continues to be an important influence on modern artists and writers.