Elizabeth Hardwick (writer)
| Elizabeth Hardwick | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
July 27, 1916 Lexington, Kentucky |
| Died | December 2, 2007 (aged 91) Manhattan |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of Kentucky |
| Genre | criticism |
| Notable awards | Guggenheim Fellowship |
| Spouse | Robert Lowell |
Elizabeth Hardwick (July 27, 1916 – December 2, 2007) was an American literary critic, novelist, and short story writer.
Hardwick was born in Lexington, Kentucky, to a strict Protestant family. She graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1939. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947.
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. The 1962 New York City newspaper strike helped inspire Hardwick, Robert Lowell, Jason Epstein, Barbara Epstein, and Robert B. Silvers to establish 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.
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.
From 1949 to 1972 she was married to the poet Robert Lowell. Their daughter is Harriet Lowell.
She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996. 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.
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