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The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle
The correspondence between one of the most famous couples of twentieth-century literature
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. Centered 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―the book has the narrative sweep of a novel, telling the story of the dramatic breakup of their twenty-one-year marriage and their extraordinary, but late, reconciliation.
Lowell’s controversial sonnet-sequence The Dolphin (for which he used 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 Essays on Women in Literature and Sleepless A Novel . Lowell and Hardwick are acutely intelligent observers of marriages, children, and friends, and of the feelings that their personal crises gave rise to.
The Dolphin Letters, masterfully edited by Saskia Hamilton, is a debate about the limits of art―what occasions a work of art, what moral and artistic license artists have to make use of their lives as material, what formal innovations such debates give rise to. The crisis of Lowell’s The Dolphin was profoundly affecting to everyone surrounding him, and Bishop’s warning to Lowell―“art just isn’t worth that much”―haunts.
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. Centered 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―the book has the narrative sweep of a novel, telling the story of the dramatic breakup of their twenty-one-year marriage and their extraordinary, but late, reconciliation.
Lowell’s controversial sonnet-sequence The Dolphin (for which he used 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 Essays on Women in Literature and Sleepless A Novel . Lowell and Hardwick are acutely intelligent observers of marriages, children, and friends, and of the feelings that their personal crises gave rise to.
The Dolphin Letters, masterfully edited by Saskia Hamilton, is a debate about the limits of art―what occasions a work of art, what moral and artistic license artists have to make use of their lives as material, what formal innovations such debates give rise to. The crisis of Lowell’s The Dolphin was profoundly affecting to everyone surrounding him, and Bishop’s warning to Lowell―“art just isn’t worth that much”―haunts.
560 pages, Hardcover
Published December 10, 2019
41 people are currently reading
1116 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Hardwick
47 books204 followersElizabeth Hardwick was an American literary critic, novelist, and short story writer.
Hardwick graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1939. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947. She was the author of three novels: The Ghostly Lover (1945), The Simple Truth (1955), and Sleepless Nights (1979). A collection of her short fiction, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick, will be published in 2010. She also 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 and in 2000 she published a short biography, Herman Melville, in Viking Press's Penguin Lives series..
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. The 1962 New York City newspaper strike helped inspire Hardwick, Robert Lowell, Jason Epstein, Barbara Epstein, and Robert B. Silvers to establish The New York Review of Books, a publication that became as much a habit for many readers as The New York Times Book Review, which Hardwick had eviscerated in her 1959 essay.
In the '70s and early '80s, Hardwick taught writing seminars at Barnard College and Columbia University's School of the Arts, Writing Division. She gave forthright critiques of student writing and was a mentor to students she considered promising.
From 1949 to 1972 she was married to the poet Robert Lowell; their daughter is Harriet Lowell.
In 2008, The Library of America selected Hardwick's account of the Caryl Chessman murders for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime writing.
Hardwick graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1939. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947. She was the author of three novels: The Ghostly Lover (1945), The Simple Truth (1955), and Sleepless Nights (1979). A collection of her short fiction, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick, will be published in 2010. She also 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 and in 2000 she published a short biography, Herman Melville, in Viking Press's Penguin Lives series..
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. The 1962 New York City newspaper strike helped inspire Hardwick, Robert Lowell, Jason Epstein, Barbara Epstein, and Robert B. Silvers to establish The New York Review of Books, a publication that became as much a habit for many readers as The New York Times Book Review, which Hardwick had eviscerated in her 1959 essay.
In the '70s and early '80s, Hardwick taught writing seminars at Barnard College and Columbia University's School of the Arts, Writing Division. She gave forthright critiques of student writing and was a mentor to students she considered promising.
From 1949 to 1972 she was married to the poet Robert Lowell; their daughter is Harriet Lowell.
In 2008, The Library of America selected Hardwick's account of the Caryl Chessman murders for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime writing.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 20, 2021
A lifetime of worrying and reading may bring you at last to free trips you are not sure you wish to take. — Elizabeth Hardwick
I read this for Lowell and I was mistaken. My knowledge of Hardwick extended only to her spouse. She was born less than a hundred miles from here and my ignorance is unforgivable. Friends of mine are heading towards a divorce. That bane of my childhood is engulfing yet more. More pain is being elicited. Almost a Moloch, fissures like tendrils emerge from the interstices, from a subconscious, a free-association in the name of some as yet elusive (or at least ephemeral) Joy with all it's attendant French translations and biochemical representations.
Thus encumbered, I approached these Dolphin letters. There’s barely a chortle. There is considerable suffering. Hoping to cauterize in advance, I loved these letters and I love Elizabeth Hardwick. Cheers again to Saskia Hamilton for the heavy lifting, though strange enough Hannah Arendt doesn't benefit from the footnotes. While Hamilton finds it necessary to list the publication date of Moby Dick as well as the director credits for every film noted, she doesn't broach any particulars regarding Arendt.
I read this for Lowell and I was mistaken. My knowledge of Hardwick extended only to her spouse. She was born less than a hundred miles from here and my ignorance is unforgivable. Friends of mine are heading towards a divorce. That bane of my childhood is engulfing yet more. More pain is being elicited. Almost a Moloch, fissures like tendrils emerge from the interstices, from a subconscious, a free-association in the name of some as yet elusive (or at least ephemeral) Joy with all it's attendant French translations and biochemical representations.
Thus encumbered, I approached these Dolphin letters. There’s barely a chortle. There is considerable suffering. Hoping to cauterize in advance, I loved these letters and I love Elizabeth Hardwick. Cheers again to Saskia Hamilton for the heavy lifting, though strange enough Hannah Arendt doesn't benefit from the footnotes. While Hamilton finds it necessary to list the publication date of Moby Dick as well as the director credits for every film noted, she doesn't broach any particulars regarding Arendt.
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August 14, 2025Our reels:
1. #TheDolphinLetters25 part 1
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNViI7...
2. #TheDolphinLetters25 part 2
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNVi0Y...
1. #TheDolphinLetters25 part 1
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNViI7...
2. #TheDolphinLetters25 part 2
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNVi0Y...
June 13, 2020
The story is well-known. At the beginning of 1970 the American poet Robert Lowell, his wife and literary critic Elizabeth Hardwick, and their daughter Harriet were in Europe. Hardwick and Harriet returned home to New York City while Lowell remained in Britain to take up a teaching fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. That spring he met and began an affair with the British novelist Caroline Blackwood. Eventually, probably under the influence of one of his manic attacks which had plagued him his whole life and for which he occasionally underwent treatment and hospitalization, Lowell decided to remain in Britain with Blackwood, divorcing Hardwick. Bound together loosely by literary ties including the sale of Lowell's papers and bound more tightly by care for Harriet, 13-years old when the saga began, Hardwick and Lowell communicated frequently by mail and phone. Hardwick was at first terribly hurt, confused, and angry. Lowell's mental state constantly fluctuated with treatments as needed. He later regretted having hurt Elizabeth and Harriet. He loved them fiercely while also loving Caroline and the son, Sheridan, he had with her. Over the remaining years of Lowell's life the letters continued. The notoriety of the triangle involved more than circumstance, however. It was magnified by Lowell's using quotes from Hardwick's letters to him in a book of sonnets he wrote, The Dolphin, in which Caroline served as his oceanic muse. The letters are not just Lowell's and Hardwick's, though. Included are those Saskia Hamilton refers to as "the circle." They were friends like Frank Bidart, Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Bishop, Mary McCarthy, and more, who thought Lowell's use of the quotes from her personal letters a betrayal of trust and privacy. Correspondence from them to Lowell show their strong objections to The Dolphin's content and support of Hardwick. What Hamilton, who edited these letters, shows is that Hardwick also used phrases or fragments from the letters in writings of her own, particularly her 1979 novel Sleepless Nights. My impression is that this isn't commonly known.
This is a well-worn story, familiar through biographies of Lowell and studies of his poetry. What makes this collection so valuable and such an enjoyable read is that Hamilton has brought the focus of those 9 years of letters onto how they impacted The Dolphin. A comprehensive "Introduction" explains their story, a "Table of Dates" details their activities across the years, and the letters are accompanied by generous footnotes which further explain events and motivations. She's made getting inside the heads of Lowell, Hardwick, Harriet, and their friends a fascinating read. The deeper we dive into this familiar story the more we learn about it and the more we're riveted and emotionally engaged. The many colors their epistolary exchanges take on over the years carry the reader through many emotions but left me sad.
This is a well-worn story, familiar through biographies of Lowell and studies of his poetry. What makes this collection so valuable and such an enjoyable read is that Hamilton has brought the focus of those 9 years of letters onto how they impacted The Dolphin. A comprehensive "Introduction" explains their story, a "Table of Dates" details their activities across the years, and the letters are accompanied by generous footnotes which further explain events and motivations. She's made getting inside the heads of Lowell, Hardwick, Harriet, and their friends a fascinating read. The deeper we dive into this familiar story the more we learn about it and the more we're riveted and emotionally engaged. The many colors their epistolary exchanges take on over the years carry the reader through many emotions but left me sad.
June 21, 2023
After seeing the news that Saskia Hamilton died this month, I pulled this volume off my shelf--I had read through the letters of 1970 but then shelved the book after getting sidetracked with work. I lost myself in the letters for the remainder of the day.
When Hamilton enrolled in graduate school at NYU, she stumbled into a job for Hardwick who needed assistance cataloguing her remaining letters from Robert Lowell. It was 1989, ten years after he died. Hardwick couldn't bear to look through the letters herself and knew she had to shield their daughter, Harriet, from the task. At the time, Hamilton didn't really know Hardwick or Lowell and did her best to discretely catalogue the letters while only snatching glimpses of the writing inside. Years later, Hamilton continued her work on Lowell's letters and published Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (2000), The Letters of Robert Lowell (2005), and then this one (2019). What started as a happenstance assignment became a cornerstone of her career.
If you're looking at this book, you're aware of Robert Lowell's use of Hardwick's letters in The Dolphin and the attendant scandal. That story is reflected here, along with the collapse of their marriage and halting rapprochement. The volume extends to their circle, with recurring appearances from Elizabeth Bishop, Mary McCarthy, Frank Bidart, Adrienne Rich, and others. These are all exceptional writers, which is on display even as they discuss mundane matters and trade gossip. It's Hardwick, though, who takes center stage. Here she is, writing to Lowell, coming to the realization that his indefinite stay in England is turning permanent:
That was June 23, 1970. She had intuited that Lowell had taken up with a woman. Two days later, she would learn it was Caroline Blackwood. Lowell had a tendency to fall in love in his manic episodes (he suffered from bipolar disorder that was only intermittently treated). In the months that followed, Hardwick realized that this was an irrevocable break. Hardwick continued to write in the impossible position she found herself in, caring for her lost husband (who was quite ill) while also unwilling to play the part of the betrayed woman. See this letter from August 5:
She closes the letter without concession:
These were the letters, from the peak of Hardwick's anguish, that Lowell excerpted in The Dolphin. Elizabeth Bishop, after seeing an early manuscript, implored Lowell to reconsider, on account of his mixing of fact and fiction and the "mischief" that lied therein. Lowell dodged the ethical objection, revising only for style, and was recognized with his second Pulitzer.
Hardwick, for her part, did not see a manuscript, and lightly demurred based on the gossip swirling around the page proofs. However, when it was published, she was distraught and indignant to see how her voice had been seized. Her outrage was no doubt heightened because Lowell continued to complicate her life with his refusal to disentangle their finances. Later, Hardwick would find some measure of acceptance, and a mending between her and Lowell was cut short with his sudden death.
There's too much to cover, including the glimmers of Sleepless Nights that emerge in the margins of this correspondence (which has reminded me that I need to revisit that novel). There's a deluge of cameos, some expected, some unexpected: Borges, Heaney, Hughes, Dworkin, Sonia Orwell, Sontag, even John Kerry, of all people. Hamilton's meticulous annotations bring so much depth to the collection, and it is a wonderful feat of scholarship to bring these letters back together from their respective repositories.
When Hamilton enrolled in graduate school at NYU, she stumbled into a job for Hardwick who needed assistance cataloguing her remaining letters from Robert Lowell. It was 1989, ten years after he died. Hardwick couldn't bear to look through the letters herself and knew she had to shield their daughter, Harriet, from the task. At the time, Hamilton didn't really know Hardwick or Lowell and did her best to discretely catalogue the letters while only snatching glimpses of the writing inside. Years later, Hamilton continued her work on Lowell's letters and published Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (2000), The Letters of Robert Lowell (2005), and then this one (2019). What started as a happenstance assignment became a cornerstone of her career.
If you're looking at this book, you're aware of Robert Lowell's use of Hardwick's letters in The Dolphin and the attendant scandal. That story is reflected here, along with the collapse of their marriage and halting rapprochement. The volume extends to their circle, with recurring appearances from Elizabeth Bishop, Mary McCarthy, Frank Bidart, Adrienne Rich, and others. These are all exceptional writers, which is on display even as they discuss mundane matters and trade gossip. It's Hardwick, though, who takes center stage. Here she is, writing to Lowell, coming to the realization that his indefinite stay in England is turning permanent:
Dear Cal: I have no idea where you are, but I will just send this off to Faber and if it doesn't reach you it doesn't matter too much. I got your cable when I came home after a weekend. When I saw it lying there on the floor I knew what it would say.
I must say I feel rather like a widow. Your things, you, your life, your family, your clothes, your work, your old shoes, ties, winter coats, books, everything seems sitting about at every turn. Thinking you were coming back I had your typewriter over-hauled and took it up too your study for you and it was just as if you were there, all your little objects, papers, books, your desk just as you left it, your bed. I suppose just as you left it isn't accurate since it is a lot cleaner waiting to be dirtied "creatively." And I was spraying mothballs on your clothes, and looking about our living room, your family, your past everywhere. I feel you have totally forgotten us as with an amnesia, but we have not forgotten you.
[. . .]
I don't know why I am writing this. There are so many absolutely pressing practical problems with Harriet and me. I have written them all to you I think and have no answer or even mention of them and so I suppose it would just be vexing to go into it all. And these are of course worrying but not my real grief and anxiety.
[. . .]
I will do the best I can. This is just to send undying love to you, a great sense of loss--from me and your daughter.
Elizabeth
That was June 23, 1970. She had intuited that Lowell had taken up with a woman. Two days later, she would learn it was Caroline Blackwood. Lowell had a tendency to fall in love in his manic episodes (he suffered from bipolar disorder that was only intermittently treated). In the months that followed, Hardwick realized that this was an irrevocable break. Hardwick continued to write in the impossible position she found herself in, caring for her lost husband (who was quite ill) while also unwilling to play the part of the betrayed woman. See this letter from August 5:
Please don't erase Harriet! A child can destroy herself over that, I get the feeling that with you she is like a cottage that once was near but has been lost to memory when a new building went up.
Are you prepared, happy to give us up for the rest of your life? Do you remember, actually, our apt, your studio, with its bed, its books, your phone? Do you remember Maine, the fire in School Street, friends, wine, music? Do you remember your barn & your seals & your long, lazy days?
She closes the letter without concession:
My heart is broken, but I must make a clean break. I am strong & still get joy out of life. I do not believe in destruction, though I am often wild.
These were the letters, from the peak of Hardwick's anguish, that Lowell excerpted in The Dolphin. Elizabeth Bishop, after seeing an early manuscript, implored Lowell to reconsider, on account of his mixing of fact and fiction and the "mischief" that lied therein. Lowell dodged the ethical objection, revising only for style, and was recognized with his second Pulitzer.
Hardwick, for her part, did not see a manuscript, and lightly demurred based on the gossip swirling around the page proofs. However, when it was published, she was distraught and indignant to see how her voice had been seized. Her outrage was no doubt heightened because Lowell continued to complicate her life with his refusal to disentangle their finances. Later, Hardwick would find some measure of acceptance, and a mending between her and Lowell was cut short with his sudden death.
There's too much to cover, including the glimmers of Sleepless Nights that emerge in the margins of this correspondence (which has reminded me that I need to revisit that novel). There's a deluge of cameos, some expected, some unexpected: Borges, Heaney, Hughes, Dworkin, Sonia Orwell, Sontag, even John Kerry, of all people. Hamilton's meticulous annotations bring so much depth to the collection, and it is a wonderful feat of scholarship to bring these letters back together from their respective repositories.
Want to read
March 28, 2025oh my god what ????? how did i not know about this???
February 9, 2020
Elizabeth Hardwick gets her due in The Dolphin Letters. Praise to Saskia Hamilton for gathering the letters---some of which Robert Lowell used to give life to his book of poems---The Dolphin. I was fascinated by the relationship between Elizabeth H. and Robert Lowell. Reading about their marriage, his infidelity and their divorce from the vantage point of 2020, it's revealing to see how much of Hardwick's energy and creativity was spent on care and support of Lowell. All the mundane details she was responsible for---taxes, house maintenance, his papers which she organized to sell to Harvard. And in the end he returned to her. Very sad ending for Lowell. I want to read Hardwick's Sleepless Nights. Included are letters to and from Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, and Mary McCarthy. Interesting side discussions of the Viet Na, war protests and the Nixon presidency.
March 13, 2020
Gathered in this volume are a fascinating collection of letters between Robert Lowell and his wife Elizabeth Hardwick, plus others from their daughter, friends and acquaintances, including Elizabeth Bishop and Mary McCarthy. The letters track a particularly difficult period of 7 years in the lives of Hardwick and Lowell and constitute a searing account of love and loss, bringing to vivid life one of literary history’s most famous scandals. In 1970 poet Robert Lowell took up a teaching post at Oxford University, leaving his wife, Elizabeth Hardwick, and their 13-year-old daughter Harriet back in the States. At a party he met Anglo-Irish writer Caroline Blackwood and moved in with her that night. Hardwick had become used to Lowell’s unfaithfulness but this was different as he intended to stay in the UK and marry Blackwood. Lowell, self-absorbed and indifferent to the consequences of his actions, used some of these letters from Hardwick in his next collection of poetry entitled The Dolphin in which he depicted the breakdown of his marriage, to Hardwick’s great and lasting distress. The letters are moving, illuminating and endlessly fascinating. Lowell doesn’t come out looking at all good, and in contrast Hardwick seem a model of loyalty and restraint, and her concern for Harriet shines through. Collections of letters don’t always make for an entertaining read, unless you are already particularly invested in the correspondents themselves, but in this case I soon became so and thoroughly this scholarly and expertly annotated edition. A great read.
November 15, 2021
I nearly put this back on the library shelf, thinking "I'll never read this." But then I decided to trust there was a reason I'd added it to my "Books to Read" list. Painfully slow reader that I am, I finished it in two weeks and even reread the Introduction because it's essentially a summary. The book kept me engaged; one reviewer noted it reads more like a novel, and that is true. I'm very glad I took the time to meet Lowell and, especially, Hardwick. (I'm ashamed to admit they were unknown to me before this.) While I'm not sure I'll now read Dolphin, I will look up Hardwick's Sleepless Nights (and mourn for The Cost of Living).
May 28, 2024
from her first letters I really did burn with passionate sympathy for and indignation on behalf of Hardwick. Lowell, starts in the more unsympathetic place of adulterer and footdragger, so he's hard to warm up to at first, though he does come into focus eventually and I began to understand the love that he inspired in his, wives and children, while not particularly wanting to be in their place.
Read as part of my current interest in literary biography and its ethics.
Read as part of my current interest in literary biography and its ethics.
May 21, 2025
Quite hard to read in its emotional rawness, lowell comes out looking quite monstrous frankly, in his slipshod indolence and lack of attention to practicalities, but he's also at first quite obviously in the grips of a low key mania
October 22, 2021
Masterpiece
May 19, 2022
lo vieja chismosa que me he sentido leyendo esto
July 23, 2023
What a trip.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews