Amy Lowell was the American poet awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry posthumously in 1926.
Lowell received the prize for her collection What's O'Clock, which was published after her death. She died in 1925, making the award posthumous. The collection reflects her interest in modernist experimentation, vivid imagery, and varied poetic forms.
Born in 1874 into a prominent Boston family, Lowell did not publish her first poetry collection until she was in her thirties. She became an important advocate for Imagism, a modernist movement that favored precise language, concentrated images, and musical free verse. Although Ezra Pound helped popularize the movement’s name, Lowell later became one of its best-known promoters in the United States.
The 1926 award is sometimes confused with later Pulitzer winners or with poets such as Emily Dickinson, Sara Teasdale, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Lowell’s posthumous recognition is notable because the Pulitzer board honored a recently deceased poet for a collection that represented the culmination of her literary work.