Elizabeth Hardwick (July 27, 1916 – December 2, 2007) was an American literary critic and writer.

She graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1939, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947. Along with Robert Lowell, Jason Epstein, Barbara Epstein, and Robert B. Silvers, Hardwick established The New York Review of Books. She later taught at Barnard College and Columbia University.

From 1949 to 1972, she was married to Robert Lowell, and they had a daughter. Susan Sontag listed Elizabeth Hardwick as one of her favorite writers.

Books

Novels

• The Ghostly Lover (1945)
• The Simple Truth (1955)
• Sleepless Nights (1979)

Short-stories

• The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick (2010)

Criticism

• A View of My Own (1962)
• Seduction and Betrayal (1974)
• Bartleby in Manhattan (1983)
•  Sight-Readings (1998)

Other

• The Selected Letters of William James (1961, editor)
• Herman Melville (2000, biography)