Elizabeth Bishop in Context

Elizabeth Bishop is increasingly recognised as one of the twentieth century''s most original writers. Consisting of thirty-five ground-breaking essays by an international team of authors including biographers literary critics poets and translators this volume addresses the biographical and literary inception of Bishop''s originality from her formative upbringing in New England and Nova Scotia to long residences in New York France Florida and Brazil. Her poetry prose letters translations and visual art are analysed in turn followed by detailed studies of literary movements such as surrealism and modernism that influenced her artistic development. Bishop''s encounters with nature music psychoanalysis and religion receive extended treatment likewise her interest in dreams and humour. Essays also investigate the impact of twentieth-century history and politics on Bishop''s life writing and what it means to read Bishop via eco-criticism postcolonial theory and queer studies.