Born in Kentucky Elizabeth Hardwick boarded a Greyhound bus to New York City in 1939 and
quickly made a name for herself as a formidable member of the intellectual elite. Her eventful
life included stretches of dire poverty lasting friendships with literary luminaries (among
them Mary McCarthy) confrontations with authors she eviscerated in The New York Review of
Books (of which she was a cofounder) and marriage to the poet Robert Lowell-whom she adored
standing by faithfully through his episodes of bipolar illness. Lowell's decision to publish
excerpts from her private letters in The Dolphin greatly distressed Hardwick and ignited a
major literary controversy. Hardwick imbued her essays with a novelistic flair and a wholly
original outlook. In A Splendid Intelligence biographer Cathy Curtis offers an intimate
portrait of an exceptional woman who emerged from a long turbulent marriage with the clarity
and wisdom that illuminate her brilliant work.
