Like so many creative individuals, poet Elizabeth Bishop's life and career were informed by an early personal tragedy.

Bishop was an only child, and her father died before she was one year old. When she was only five, her mother was sent away permanently to a mental institution. Bishop never saw her mother again. At first, her maternal grandparents took care of her, moving her to Nova Scotia, Canada. Some years later, her paternal grandparents provided her with a home. They were a Massachusetts family of means, and were concerned that Bishop had limited financial and educational resources in Nova Scotia.

Once Bishop went to live in Massachusetts, she enrolled in the elite Walnut Hills School for Girls. Upon her graduation, she enrolled at Vassar College. It was her Vassar years that most significantly informed her writing career. While there, she met poet Marianne Moore, and the two became lifelong friends.

After graduation, she moved to New York and traveled extensively throughout Western Europe and North Africa. Her poetry has the imprint of her early journeys. In 1938 she moved to Key West, Florida, where her experiences there informed her Pulitzer Prize-winning North and South. Later, she moved from Florida to Brazil, where she lived for fourteen years.

In 1970, she accepted a teaching position at Harvard University. That same year she was the recipient of a National Book Award in Poetry for The Complete Poems. She was also awarded the Neustade International Prize for Literature. She was named Consultant in Poetry by the Library of Congress for 1949-50, and honorary consultant in American Letters, beginning in 1958.

Her star rose late in life, and was at its height at the time of her death in 1976. Bishop was an accomplished painter as well as poet, and in both disciplines she is known and well-regarded for her ability to capture image-drenched, significant scenes. Her personal wealth allowed her to take all the time she needed to complete and edit her work; however, much of her poetry and art deal with working-class themes.

Her poetry has been compared to Alexander Calder mobiles, which turn subtly, flawlessly noting every element of the work. Literary critic, Larry Rohter has referred to Bishop as "one of the most important American poets" of the twentieth century.