Biography of Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer and is considered one of the most important American poets of the 20th century. Elizabeth Bishop was known for her highly detailed and objective point of view. In some of Bishop's writing she used details about her life and the people in her life , but she was always cautious because she had tried to avoid using personal details from her life in her poetry. Elizabeth Bishop was born February 8, 1911 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Bishop was a only child and her father had died when she was eight months old, Bishop's mother had became mentally ill and was institutionalized in 1916 and had remained in the asylum until her death in 1934. Bishop was orphaned during her very early childhood, she lived with her grandparents on a farm in Great Village, Nova Scotia. Soon Bishop was removed from the care of her grandparents and her paternal family gained custody and soon after she moved in with her father's wealthy family back in Worcester, Massachusetts. Bishop had attended the Walnut Hill School in Natick Massachusetts,where she studied music. By 1929 she entered Vassar College planning to be a …show more content…
Bishop was able to travel widely without worry about employment and lived in many cities and countries. In 1949 to 1950 Bishop was a Consultant in Poetry for the Library of congress, and lived in a Bertha Looker's Boarding house in Georgetown, Washington D.C. By 1951 Bishop had won the Houghton Mifflin Prize for poetry, published 1,000 copies of her book, North & South, and received a $2,500 traveling fellowship from Bryn Mawr College. Bishop circumnavigated South American by boat and had arrived in Santos, Brazil, Bishop only expected to stay two weeks but stayed fifteen years. While Bishop lived in Brazil she received the Pulitzer Prize for a collection of poetry: North & South/ A Cold