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Elizabeth Bruce Hardwick (July 27, 1916 – December 2, 2007) was an American literary critic, novelist, and short story writer.[1]

Elizabeth Hardwick
Born	(1916-07-27)July 27, 1916 Lexington, Kentucky, U.S.
Died	December 2, 2007(2007-12-02) (aged 91) New York City, U.S.
Alma mater	University of Kentucky
Genre	Literary criticism, essays
Notable awards	Guggenheim Fellowship American Academy of Arts and Letters (1977)
Spouse	Robert Lowell ​ ​ (m. 1949; div. 1972)​

Early life

Elizabeth Bruce Hardwick was born as the eighth of eleven children in Lexington, Kentucky, on July 27, 1916, to a strict and large Protestant family.[1][2] She was the daughter of Eugene Allen Hardwick, a plumbing and heating contractor, and Mary (née Ramsey) Hardwick.[1]

She graduated from the University of Kentucky, with a BA in 1938 and continued on for a MA in 1939. She then entered the PhD program at Columbia University. She withdrew from graduate study in 1941 to concentrate on writing. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947.[3]

Career

In 1959, Hardwick published in Harper's, "The Decline of Book Reviewing", a generally harsh and even scathing critique of book reviews published in American periodicals of the time. She published four books of criticism: A View of My Own (1962), Seduction and Betrayal (1974), Bartleby in Manhattan (1983), and Sight-Readings (1998).[1] In 1961, she edited The Selected Letters of William James.[1]

The 1962 New York City newspaper strike helped inspire Hardwick, Robert Lowell, Jason Epstein, Barbara Epstein, and Robert B. Silvers to found The New York Review of Books, a publication that became as much a habit for many readers as The New York Times Book Review, which Hardwick had eviscerated in her 1959 essay.[2]

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Hardwick taught writing seminars at Barnard College and Columbia University's School of the Arts, Writing Division. She gave forthright critiques of student writing and was a mentor to students she considered promising.[4]

She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996.[5] In 2000, she published a short biography, Herman Melville, in Viking Press's Penguin Lives series.[1]

In 2008, the Library of America selected Hardwick's account of Caryl Chessman's crimes for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime writing. A collection of her short fiction, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick, was published posthumously in 2010,[6] as was The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick in 2017.[7]

Cathy Curtis published in 2021 a biography of Hardwick, A Splendid Intelligence: The Life of Elizabeth Hardwick.[8][9]

Personal life

From July 28, 1949, until their eventual divorce in 1972, she was married to Robert Lowell, the Pulitzer Prize‐winning poet from the prominent Boston Brahmin family. Their daughter is Harriet Lowell.[1]

She died in a Manhattan hospital on December 2, 2007.[1][10]

Published works

Hardwick was the author of three novels and a biography of American novelist Herman Melville:[1]

• The Ghostly Lover (1945)
• The Simple Truth (1955)
• Sleepless Nights (1979)
• Herman Melville (2000)

References

External links

• Elizabeth Hardwick Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
• Guide to the Elizabeth Hardwick manuscript, 1955 housed at the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center.

На других языках

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- [en] Elizabeth Hardwick (writer)

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[ru] Хардвик, Элизабет

Элизабет Брюс Хардвик (англ. Elizabeth Bruce Hardwick; 27 июля 1916 г., Лексингтон, штат Кентукки — 2 декабря 2007 г., Манхэттен) — американский литератор, критик, эссеистка, автор трёх романов. Член Американской академии искусств и наук (1996).

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