Editing Wallace Stevens (section)

===Education and marriage===
The son of a prosperous lawyer, Stevens attended [[Harvard University|Harvard]] as a non-degree three-year special student from 1897 to 1900, where he served as the 1901 president of ''[[The Harvard Advocate]]''. According to his biographer Milton Bates, Stevens was personally introduced to the philosopher [[George Santayana]] while living in Boston and was strongly influenced by Santayana's book ''Interpretations of Poetry and Religion''.<ref>''Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens''. "Stevens and the Supreme Fiction", by Milton Bates, p. 49.</ref> Holly Stevens, his daughter, recalled her father's long dedication to Santayana when she posthumously reprinted her father's collected letters in 1977 for Knopf.<ref name="Richardson, Joan 1988, p. 22">Richardson, Joan. ''Wallace Stevens: The Later Years, 1923–1955'', New York: Beech Tree Books, 1988, p. 22.</ref> In one of his early journals, Stevens gave an account of spending an evening with Santayana in early 1900 and sympathizing with Santayana about a poor review published at that time of ''Interpretations''.<ref>George Santayana. ''Interpretations of Poetry and Religion''. Introduction by Joel Porte, MIT Press, page xxix.</ref> After his Harvard years, Stevens moved to New York City and briefly worked as a journalist. He then attended [[New York Law School]], graduating with a law degree in 1903, following the example of his two other brothers with law degrees.

On a trip back to Reading in 1904, Stevens met Elsie Viola Kachel (1886–1963, also known as Elsie Moll), a young woman who had worked as a saleswoman, [[milliner]], and [[stenographer]].<ref>''The Contemplated Spouse: The Letters of Wallace Stevens to Elsie Kachel'', edited by J. Donald Blount (The University of South Carolina Press, 2006)</ref> After a long courtship, he married her in 1909 over the objections of his parents, who considered her poorly educated and lower-class. As ''The New York Times'' reported in 2009, "Nobody from his family attended the wedding, and Stevens never again visited or spoke to his parents during his father's lifetime."<ref name="Vendler">{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/books/review/Vendler-t.html| work=The New York Times | title=The Plain Sense of Things | first=Helen | last=Vendler | date=August 23, 2009}}</ref> A daughter, Holly, was born in 1924. She was baptized [[Episcopalian]] and later posthumously edited her father's letters and a collection of his poems.<ref name="Richardson, Joan 1988, p. 22"/>

[[File:Walking Liberty Half Dollar 1945D Obverse.png|thumb|left|Stevens's wife, Elsie, may have been a model for the national [[Walking Liberty half dollar]] when the couple lived in New York City]]
In 1913, the Stevenses rented a New York City apartment from sculptor [[Adolph Alexander Weinman|Adolph A. Weinman]], who made a bust of Elsie. Her striking profile may have been used on Weinman's 1916–1945 [[Mercury dime]] and the [[Walking Liberty Half Dollar]].<ref>{{cite news |last1=Devlin |first1=Ron |title=Wallace Stevens' wife believed to have been model for figure on Mercury dime |url=http://www2.readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=309165 |access-date=18 April 2020 |work=Reading Eagle |date=2011-05-20}}</ref> In later years, Elsie Stevens began to exhibit symptoms of mental illness and the marriage suffered as a result, but the couple remained married.<ref name="Vendler"/> In his biography of Stevens, [[Paul Mariani]] relates that the couple was largely estranged, separated by nearly a full decade in age, though living in the same home.  By the mid-1930s, Mariani writes: "there were signs of domestic fracture to consider. From the beginning, Stevens, who had not shared a bedroom with his wife for years now, moved into the master bedroom with its attached study on the second floor."<ref>Mariani, Paul. ''The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens,'' New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016. Page 174.</ref>