Elizabeth Hardwick:

An Inventory of Her Papers at the Harry Ransom Center

Biographical Sketch

Born July 27, 1916, Elizabeth Hardwick grew up with ten brothers and sisters in Lexington, Kentucky. She attended local schools, and received a master's degree in English from the University of Kentucky in 1939. Shortly thereafter, Hardwick moved to New York, and began classes at Columbia University, where she would matriculate for the next two years.

The contrast between life in Kentucky and in New York inspired Hardwick to write her first novel, The Ghostly Lover, which was published in 1945. The plot focused on the emotional development of a southern women who has moved to New York, which she adopts as her home. Hardwick received critical attention for her talented prose style, as well as her descriptions of people and places.

After the book was published, Philip Rahv, an editor of the Partisan Review, asked Hardwick to become a contributor. Her appearance in this journal marked the beginning of a long career in literary and social criticism. She went on to publish well-received essays in Partisan Review, The New Republic, and Harper's. In 1947, Hardwick won a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction.

Two years later, Hardwick met and married the poet Robert Lowell. They spent the next decade traveling in Europe and moving around the United States where Lowell taught poetry at the University of Iowa, the University of Indiana, and the University of Cincinnati. In 1954, they settled in Boston, where they would remain for the next six years. While in Boston, Hardwick published a second novel, The Simple Truth, in 1955, and gave birth in 1957 to her only child, Harriet Lowell.

The Lowells returned to Manhattan in 1960, and Hardwick began editing a compilation of letters by William James, which was published the next year. In 1963, a printer's strike shut down the book review offices of The New York Times and the Herald Tribune. Hardwick, who had long bemoaned the state of book reviewing in the United States, met with a group of friends to found the New York Review of Books. The NYRB became one of the most controversial and intellectually challenging journals in the United States, and Hardwick served as an advisory editor since its founding.

Hardwick continued to publish critical essays throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and was the first woman to win the George Jean Nathan Award for outstanding drama criticism in 1967. Many of her essays were compiled and published in book form in A view of My Own: Essays on Literature and Society (1962), Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature (1974), and Bartleby in Manhattan (1986).

Hardwick's third novel, Sleepless Nights, was published in 1979. Its semi-autobiographical nature, focusing on the reminiscences of a woman named Elizabeth, received almost unanimous critical acclaim. Sleepless Nights was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1980.

Hardwick continued to be an influential literary and social commentator. Anne Tyler wrote of her, “Whatever her subject, Hardwick has a gift for coming up with descriptions so thoughtfully selected, so exactly right, that they strike the reader as inevitable.” Hardwick died in Manhattan on December 2, 2007, at the age of ninety-one.

Scope and Contents

Seven boxes of creative works, correspondence, printed material, articles and photographs, 1934-1991 (bulk 1960-90) represent Elizabeth Hardwick's life and career. The material is arranged in two series, and follows Hardwick's original arrangement where possible. The Works series (four boxes, 1956-1991, bulk 1975-1985) represents Hardwick's work as a novelist and literary critic. The Personal series (three boxes, 1934-1989, bulk 1970-89) documents Hardwick's life, activities, friendships, and her relationship with her husband, Robert Lowell.

In conjunction with books and journals donated by Hardwick now housed in the HRC book collections, the materials in the first series offer an almost complete archive of her published works. The typescripts of many unpublished articles, as well as lectures and presentations, can also be found in the collection. Of particular interest are the manuscript drafts of her 1979 novel, Sleepless Nights. This book is the most fully documented in the collection, and includes four folders of reviews from around the world.

The material in the second series is made up largely of correspondence, but also includes photographs, interviews, awards and honors given to Hardwick, as well as materials she accumulated following the death of her husband, Robert Lowell. The correspondence to Hardwick is arranged alphabetically in two groupings. The first of these includes general correspondence, and is notable for its inclusion of many significant authors, who were friends of Hardwick's, discussing their works or giving their opinions on recent literature and events. Of particular interest is the collection of letters from Robert Lowell, dating 1949 to 1977, as well as letters from Hardwick's close friend, Mary McCarthy. The series also includes a large number of condolence letters written to Hardwick on the death of Lowell, as well as a small amount of correspondence from Hardwick, and letters from Lowell to his daughter, Harriet.

The collection gives a good overview of Hardwick's writing career. Less well documented, however, are the events of her personal life. The collection lacks information on her activities prior to 1949, and does not include manuscripts of her earliest publications. The collection documents more fully Hardwick's career and life in the 1970s and 1980s.

The collection should be of particular interest to scholars of Robert Lowell, and references to him are found throughout the second series. Many of Hardwick's correspondents refer to him in their letters, and his frequent letters to Hardwick illuminate his life and writing career. The group of condolence letters Hardwick received upon his death contain personal reminiscences from a number of distinguished authors, such as Stephen Spender, Lillian Hellman, and Adrienne Rich. Further, two folders of notes and correspondence relating to the publication of two books about Lowell, by Ian Hamilton and C. David Heymann, contain biographical information contributed by Elizabeth Hardwick, as well as her disagreements with passages in the works.

Restrictions

Access

Open for research. Photocopies of letters belonging to Princeton University may not be photographed or reproduced without permission.

Separated Material

Administrative Information

Acquisition

Gift, 1991 (G 8738)

Processed by

Jennifer B. Patterson, 1993

Series Descriptions

Elizabeth Hardwick Papers--Folder List

Elizabeth Hardwick Papers--Index of Correspondents

Elizabeth Hardwick Papers--Index of Works