The following information about Sara is from William Drake's biography, Sara Teasdale, Woman & Poet, published in 1979 by Harper & Row.
Sara was born in St. Louis, Missouri on August 8, 1884, the youngest child of John Warren Teasdale, a prominent businessman with a fine stable, and Mary Elizabeth Willard Teasdale, who were already in middle age at her birth. Mrs. Teasdale was socially prominent and both she and Mr. Teasdale were staunch Baptists with a Puritan heritage.
Sarah (she dropped the 'h' when she first published her poetry) was known as Sadie within the family until she grew up. She was raised in the "Genteel Tradition" of her time, in which she was educated at home until she was nine, and then sent to girl's schools. She was a voracious reader, a keen observer of nature, and analytical about her emotions and responses. Sheltered and protected and thought to be frail by her family, even though there is no medical evidence to support ill-health, she was made to rest and retreat from the world when stressed. Over the years, she developed illness as response to stress and enervating experiences, and her preoccupation with death stems from an early age.
Sara learned early to submerge her feelings under a placid, nice exterior. Her family was her world and she grew up in the company of adults. She learned the Puritan mode of doing what was good for her, no matter how difficult or distasteful, and as she grew older and learned more of the pleasures of the world she distinguished between her "Puritan" and "Greek" selves.
She lived at home, with brief times away to travel within the US and to Europe, until her late twenties. As she perfected her skills, her poetry grew from the child-like verses to the adult exploration of emotional life. Her poetry spans the tradition of women's poetry of the middle and late nineteenth century to the sometimes shocking, to her, twentieth century. As Drake says,
Nowhere else in our literature has such a transition been recorded so clearly and articulately. She spoke for all women emerging from the humility of subservience into the pride of achievement, recognizing that her art sprang from the conflict of forces that pulled her in opposite directions.
Her poetry came from her emotions. A characteristic of the principal poets of the nineteenth century was their reclusiveness. Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti and others withdrew from the world to create their poetry in seclusion. Sara did this as well, retreating when her life, her later marriage and her career demanded too much of her. Her many illnesses enabled her to retire into quiet reflection and protected her from noisy life until she felt strong enough to return.
Sara's poetry follows the feminine school of poetry in that love was the central theme. Even though her early work is girlish, her discipline and clean simplicity display the strength of understatement which characterizes the body of her work. She wrote of her emotions, her emotional response to the world and people around her.
Sara first entertained thoughts of suicide in 1913 when a relationship she'd counted on failed to materialize. Later analysts credit these thoughts to her lack of self-worth. Since Sara placed high value on pleasing her father, judging her herself as a reflection of him, when a man rejected her, her self-esteem plummeted. Sara had little or no experience with love affairs, or with men, and this is reflected in the romantic nature of her poetry.
When she married Ernst Filsinger, her life changed. So did her poetry.
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