{"product_id":"the-dolphin-letters-1970-1979-elizabeth-hardwick-9780374539153","title":"The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe correspondence between one of the most famous couples of twentieth-century literature\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Dolphin Letters\u003c\/i\u003e 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. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eLowell's controversial sonnet-sequence \u003ci\u003eThe Dolphin\u003c\/i\u003e (for which he used Hardwick's letters as a source) and his last book, \u003ci\u003eDay by Day\u003c\/i\u003e, were written during this period, as were Hardwick's influential books \u003ci\u003eSeduction and Betrayal: Essays on Women in Literature\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eSleepless Nights: A Novel\u003c\/i\u003e. Lowell and Hardwick are acutely intelligent observers of marriages, children, and friends, and of the feelings that their personal crises gave rise to. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Dolphin Letters, \u003c\/i\u003emasterfully 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 \u003ci\u003eThe Dolphin\u003c\/i\u003e was profoundly affecting to everyone surrounding him, and Bishop's warning to Lowell--\"art just isn't worth that much\"--haunts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0374539154\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780374539153\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Farrar, Straus and Giroux\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/01\/2020\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 560\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 2.05lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.90h x 5.80w x 1.70d","brand":"Elizabeth Hardwick","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44047550021887,"sku":"9780374539153","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_c2c67453-21f4-4f40-a7a3-5267865fd8f1.jpg?v=1684990853","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-dolphin-letters-1970-1979-elizabeth-hardwick-9780374539153","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}