People like Elizabeth Hardwick

Elizabeth Bruce Hardwick (July 27, 1916 – December 2, 2007) was an American literary critic, novelist, and short story writer.

Elizabeth Bruce Hardwick was born as the eighth of eleven children in Lexington, Kentucky, on July 27, 1916, to a strict and large Protestant family. She was the daughter of Eugene Allen Hardwick, a plumbing and heating contractor, and Mary (née Ramsey) Hardwick.

She graduated from the University of Kentucky, with a BA in 1938 and continued on for a MA in 1939. She then entered the PhD program at Columbia University. She withdrew from graduate study in 1941 to concentrate on writing. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947.

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. She 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.