A Splendid Intelligence

Born in Kentucky, Elizabeth Hardwick left for New York City on a Greyhound bus 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, romantic escapades, and dustups with authors she eviscerated in The New York Review of Books, of which she was a cofounder. She formed lasting friendships with literary notables-including Mary McCarthy, Adrienne Rich, and Susan Sontag-who appreciated her sharp wit and relish for gossip, progressive politics, and great literature.

Hardwick's life and writing were shaped by a turbulent 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 emerged from the scandal with the clarity and wisdom that illuminate her brilliant work-most notably Sleepless Nights, a daring, lyrical, and keenly perceptive collage of reflections and glimpses of people encountered as they stumble through lives of deprivation or privilege.

A Splendid Intelligence finally gives Hardwick her due as one of the great postwar cultural critics. Ranging over a broad territory-from the depiction of women in classic novels to the civil rights movement, from theater in New York to life in Brazil, Kentucky, and Maine-Hardwick's essays remain strikingly original, fiercely opinionated, and exquisitely wrought. In this lively and illuminating biography, Cathy Curtis offers an intimate portrait of an exceptional woman who vigorously forged her own identity on and off the page.

“"Towards the end, Hardwick observed that 'Writing is so hard... It's the only time in your life when you have to think.' She kept at it, excelled and endured, and this book does that effort justice."”

"Cathy Curtis has given us a stirring biography of Elizabeth Hardwick, who is still woefully underestimated as a humane Southern writer and unsparing New York intellectual, the author of a fictional masterpiece, Sleepless Nights, and some of the finest essays ever written about American literature. It’s a thrill to read this splendidly intelligent book." -- Edward Hirsch, author of Stranger by Night
"Cathy Curtis’s sympathetic yet clear-eyed portrait of Elizabeth Hardwick’s brilliant mess of a life is a revelation... A vivid and at times harrowing book, A Splendid Intelligence is, in the end, a triumphant biography." -- William Souder, Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winning author of Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck
"As a biographer, Curtis is sober, respectful, diligent." -- Jennifer Szalai - The New York Times
"Curtis treats Hardwick’s work with respect and admiration. . . . I finished this book with a strong sense of Hardwick’s resolve and intelligence." -- Heather Clark - The New York Times Book Review
"The fearless critic finally escapes the shadow of her husband Robert Lowell in Cathy Curtis’s sensitive biography… Certainly other biographers of Hardwick will rely on Curtis’s groundbreaking work, and, hopefully, make the case for her rightful inclusion among the important women writers of the 20th century." -- Elaine Showalter - The Spectator
"“[A Splendid Intelligence] is affectionate, generous and touching but never mawkish… it is exemplary in its quiet proficiency, calm balance and telling restraint... Cathy Curtis is a self-effacing biographer… A rich, busy, varied life is covered in ten spry chapters. In three hundred pages of text there is no heavy trudging for the reader through extraneous details or laborious arguments.”" -- Richard Davenport-Hines - Literary Review

Cathy Curtis is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer and past president of Biographers International Organization. She has written four biographies, including A Generous Vision: The Creative Life of Elaine de Kooning. Curtis lives in California.

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