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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 three novels: The Ghostly Lover (1945), The Simple Truth (1955), and Sleepless Nights (1979). A collection of her short fiction, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick, will be published in 2010. She also published four books of criticism: A View of My Own (1962), Seduction and Betrayal (1974), Bartleby in Manhattan (1983), and Sight-Readings (1998). In 1961 she edited The Selected Letters of William James and in 2000 she published a short biography, Herman Melville, in Viking Press's Penguin Lives series..

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 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.

In 2008, The Library of America selected Hardwick's account of the Caryl Chessman murders for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime writing.]]> female 1916/07/27 2007/12/04 347413 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173935582m/347413.jpg 3.91 116 1979 7821 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165644394m/7821.jpg 3.94 33 1974 524284 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175533518m/524284.jpg 3.25 12 2000 432714 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1215593248m/432714.jpg 3.83 6 1982 1607486 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1185808051m/1607486.jpg 4.20 5 1979 432717 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174707604m/432717.jpg 3.80 5 1998 432713 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174707602m/432713.jpg 4.00 4 1999 432716 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg 3.75 4 1986 1702690 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1200856925m/1702690.jpg 2.67 3 1983 1319892 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg 4.00 1 1982