WINNER OF THE PEGASUS AWARD FOR POETRY CRITICISM
The Dolphin Letters offers an unprecedented portrait of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick during the last seven years of Lowell-s life (1970 to 1977), a time of personal crisis and creative innovation for both writers. Centred on the letters they exchanged with each other and with other members of their circle - writers, intellectuals, friends and publishers, including Elizabeth Bishop, Caroline Blackwood, Mary McCarthy and Adrienne Rich - this book has the narrative sweep of a novel, telling the story of the dramatic breakup of Lowell and Hardwick''s twenty-one-year marriage and their extraordinary, but late, reconciliation.
Lowell-s sonnet sequence The Dolphin (for which he controversially adapted Hardwick-s letters as a source) and his last book, Day by Day, were written during this period, as were Hardwick-s influential books Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature and Sleepless
