Born on February 8, 1911, in Worcester, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Bishop was reared by her maternal grandparents in Nova Scotia, Canada, and an aunt in Boston. After graduating from Vassar College in 1934, she traveled abroad often, living for a time in Key West, Florida (1938-42), and Mexico (1943). She was consultant in poetry at the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950.

Much of Bishop's later work addresses the frigid/tropical dichotomy of a New England conscience in a tropic sphere. Questions of Travel (1965) and Geography III (1976) offer spare, powerful meditations on the need for self-exploration, on the value of art (especially poetry) in human life, and on human responsibility in a chaotic world. The latter collection includes some of Bishop's best-known poems, among them "In the Waiting Room," "Crusoe in England," and the exquisite villanelle "One Art." A collection entitled The Complete Poems was published in 1969. Bishop taught writing at Harvard University from 1970 to 1977. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1976. Posthumously published volumes include The Complete Poems, 1927-1979 (1983) and The Collected Prose (1984). She died in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 6, 1979.