Elizabeth Hardwick (July 27, 1916 – December 2, 2007) was an American literary critic, novelist, and short story writer.
Hardwick was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1939. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947. She was the author of The Ghostly Lover (1945), The Simple Truth (1955), Seduction and Betrayal (1974), and Sleepless Nights (1979).
In 1959, Hardwick published in Harper's, "The Decl...
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Elizabeth Hardwick (July 27, 1916 – December 2, 2007) was an American literary critic, novelist, and short story writer.
Hardwick was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1939. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947. She was the author of The Ghostly Lover (1945), The Simple Truth (1955), Seduction and Betrayal (1974), and Sleepless Nights (1979).
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 '70s and early '80s, Hardwick taught writing seminars at Barnard College and Columbia...
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