Reading Elizabeth Bishop

A comprehensive and original guide to Elizabeth Bishop's poetry and other writing, including literary criticism and prose fiction

Celebrating Elizabeth Bishop as an international writer with allegiances to various countries and national traditions, this collection of essays explores how Bishop moves between literal geographies like Nova Scotia, New England, Key West and Brazil and more philosophical categories like home and elsewhere, human and animal, insider and outsider.

The book covers all aspects and periods of the author's career, from her early writing in the 1930s to the late poems finished after Geography III and those works published after her death. It also examines how Bishop's work has been read and reinterpreted by contemporary writers.

Key Features

• Provides a companion to Bishop's entire artistic oeuvre, including letter writing, literary criticism and short story writing
• Offers a sustained consideration of Bishop's identity politics, including the role of race
• Studies Bishop's influence on contemporary culture