Elizabeth Bishop

About

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and U.S. Poet Laureate who is remembered for North & South, A Cold Spring, Questions of Travel, and other works. Her 1969 Complete Poems collection received the prestigious National Book Award.

Before Fame

She studied at Vassar College, where she started out as a musical composition major.

Trivia

Her inheritance from her father funded a series of South American travels in her later years.

Family Life

Her father died when she was an infant, and when she was only five years old, her mother entered a mental institution. Consequently, she was raised by her grandparents in Nova Scotia and by her aunt in Boston.

Associated With

She was a friend of poet Robert Lowell, but she disapproved of his personal, confessional style of poetry.