In 1937, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay came close to refusing an honorary degree from New York University when she learned she had been excluded from a reception for male recipients of the doctorate at the Waldorf-Astoria and instead was to have a quiet dinner with the chancellor's wife.
By that time, Millay had written almost 10 books of poetry, won a Pulitzer Prize and cut herself out of corsets and stays by — as she so famously put it — "burning her candle at both ends" during the Jazz Age.
Millay...