Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Bishop, an American poet, was born on February 8, 1911, in Worcester, Massachusetts, and died on October 6, 1979, in Boston Massachusetts. She was 68 years old. She is considered one of the most distinguished American poets of the 20th century, and was probably one of the most adorned in her achievements. Major Achievements Her first book of poems, North & South (1946), was reprinted in 1955 with additions, as North & South: A Cold Spring, winning Bishop a Pulitzer Prize For Poetry that same year. She was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and a consultant in poetry for the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950. She was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1976. Her first book, North & South, won the Houghton Mifflin Poetry Award for 1946 and in 1955, she won the Pulitzer Prize for North & South: A Cold Spring. Her next book of poetry, Questions of Travel (1965), won the National Book Award. In 1967, Bishop was the recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships. The Complete Poems won the National Book Award in 1969. Geography III (1976) was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1976, Miss Bishop became the first American and the first woman to win the Books Abroad/Neustadt Prize …show more content…
However, she entered Vassar College in the fall of 1929, shortly before the stock market crash, majoring in music composition and piano, but changed her mind the next year, switching her major to English. It was as a Vassar student that Elizabeth Bishop met Marianne Moore in 1934, in the New York Public Library. Moore played a significant role in the following year in Bishop's decision not to enroll in Cornell Medical School. Moore had discouraged her from attending medical school. Bishop graduated from Vassar College in 1934, earning a bachelor’s degree in English