Hay was one of President Lincoln's two private secretaries; later he became an Anglophile oligarch in the Henry Adams set

3153. Hay / From Poetry to Politics, by Tyler Dennett (read 26 Jan 1999) This won the 1934 Pulitzer for biography. I liked it a lot. Hay was kind of a languid figure, and outside of being secretary to Lincoln, writing a 10-volume bio of Lincoln with Nicolay, being ambassador to England, and being Secretary of State from 1898 till he died in 1905 he did not do too much, tho he did write some poems which once were famous--I found some in an anthology I have, and I did not care for them much, tho I do approve of much 19th century poetry. ( )