Elizabeth Bishop

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Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American poet and short-story writer.

She was an Education Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the National Book Award winner in 1956, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976.

She was perhaps "the most purely gifted poet of the twentieth century," Dwight Garner said.

Early life

Bishop John Paul, a single boy, was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, to William Thomas and Gertrude May (Bulmer) Bishop. Bishop's mother became sick after her father, a successful builder, died when she was eight months old, and she was institutionalized in 1916. (Bishop will later write about her mother's struggles in her short story "In the Village." She lived with her maternal grandparents on a farm in Great Village, Nova Scotia, which she also referred to in her writing. She was effectively orphaned during her early childhood. The bishop's mother stayed in an asylum until her death in 1934, and the two were never reunited.

The Bishop's paternal family obtained custody later in childhood. She was taken from the care of her grandparents and moved in Worcester, Massachusetts, with her father's wealthy family. However, Bishop was dissatisfied, and her absence from her maternal grandparents made her lonely. She had persistent asthma when she was living in Worcester, and the rest of her life was miserable. In her poem "In The Waiting Room," she was briefly chronicled her time in Worcester. In 1918, her grandparents, who knew that Bishop was unsatisfied with them, forced her to live with her mother's oldest sister, Maude Bulmer Shepherdson, and her husband George. Maude was paid by the Bishops to house and educate their granddaughter. The Shepherdsons lived in a tenement in an impoverished Revere, Massachusetts neighborhood that was mainly composed of Irish and Italian immigrants. The family then relocated to Cliftondale, Massachusetts, where they eventually found better conditions. It was Bishop Tennyson's aunt who introduced her to Victorian writers, including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, Robert Browning, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

As an infant, Bishop was very ill and, as a result, she received very little formal education before she began attending Saugham High School for her freshman year. For her sophomore year, she was accepted to the Walnut Hill School in Natick, Massachusetts, but she was behind on her vaccinations and was not allowed to attend. Rather, she spent the year at the Shore Country Day School in Beverly, Massachusetts. Bishop William Johnston boarded at Walnut Hill School, where she studied music. Frani Blough's first poems were published in a student magazine at the school. Then enrolled in Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, shortly after the stock market crash, intending to be a composer. She stopped playing music due to a fear of failure and migrated to England, where she took courses in 16th and 17th century literature and the novel. Bishop In her senior year, she appeared in The Magazine (headquartered in California). Conceptiono, a radical literary journal at Vassar, was founded in 1933 by author Mary McCarthy (one year her senior), Margaret Miller (one year her senior), and the sisters Eunice and Eleanor Clark. In 1934, Bishop Vassar obtained a bachelor's degree.

Later life

Bishop Leopold began teaching in higher education for a number of years, beginning in the 1970s as her inheritance began to run out. She worked at the University of Washington for a brief period before retiring from Harvard University for seven years. On the island of North Haven, Maine, she spent several summers near the end of her life. She studied at New York University before completing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "I don't believe in writing courses at all," she said. "I'm sure children write amazing things and paint stunning photos," she said, but I think they should be discouraged."

In 1971, Bishop began a friendship with Alice Methfessel, who became her literary executor. Bishop, who was never a prolific writer, said she'd start many projects and leave them unfinished. She died of a cerebral aneurysm in her apartment at Lewis Wharf, Boston, Massachusetts, two years after publishing her last book, Geography III (1977). The epitaph, as well as her inscription, was added to the family monument in Worcester on the occasion of the Elizabeth Bishop Conference and Poetry Festival.

The Elizabeth Bishop House, an artists' retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia, was dedicated to her memory after her death. In 1981, Vassar College Library acquired her literary and personal papers. Her personal correspondence and manuscripts are found in numerous other literary collections in American research libraries.

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Awards and honors

• 1945: Houghton Mifflin Poetry Prize Fellowship
• 1947: Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1949: Appointed Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress
• 1950: American Academy of Arts and Letters Award
• 1951: Lucy Martin Donelly Fellowship (awarded by Bryn Mawr College)
• 1953: Shelley Memorial Award
• 1954: Elected to lifetime membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters
• 1956: Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
• 1960: Chapelbrook Foundation Award
• 1964: Academy of American Poets Fellowship
• 1968: Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 1968: Ingram Merrill Foundation Grant
• 1969: The Order of Rio Branco (awarded by the Brazilian government)
• 1970: National Book Award for Poetry
• 1974: Harriet Monroe Poetry Award
• 1976: Books Abroad/Neustadt International Prize
• 1976: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 1977: National Book Critics Circle Award
• 1978: Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2010: Elected to inaugural class of the New York Writers Hall of Fame