Elizabeth Bishop and the Literary Archive

Frank Bidart describes his first encounter with “In the Waiting Room.” Letter used by permission of Frank Bidart, © 2019. (VC 1.14; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Bishop's annotated first draft of "In the Waiting Room."

The cover of the National Geographic magazine from February of 1918.

This article by Ralph Graves encourages American children to support the war effort by raising pigs.

The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in Alaska, which was explored by a National Geographic team in 1916.

Winston Churchill poses in front of the Egyptian pyramids, 1898.

An excerpt from a page of Bishop’s notebook with a draft of “Blue Postman.” (VC 75.3; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Page from Bishop’s notebook featuring images that would later be used in “Cape Breton,” "A Summer's Dream," and "At the Fishhouses." (VC 75.3, p. 115; Courtesy of Vassar College)

A passage from Bishop’s June 14, 1970 letter to Dorothee Bowie. (VC 27.5; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Part of the first page of the second draft of Bishop’s unpublished short story "The River-Rat."

Bishop and Methfessel met in 1970 at Harvard, where Methfessel worked as a secretary. The women were partners until Bishop’s death in 1979. (snapshot 1972; photographer unknown; VC 100.16; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Bishop’s typed letters to Methfessel are full of corrections, additions, and postscripts; the “messier” quality of these letters reveals a level of openness and spontaneity that Bishop had with few, if any, of her other correspondents. (Bishop to Methfessel, February 16, 1971, VC 114.32; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Stickers like the one at the top of this letter are an untranscribable element of the love letters that convey an understanding of the correspondents’ playfulness and tenderness. In a typical move, Bishop self-consciously comments on the sentimentality of the sticker with “yucky, isn’t it?” (Bishop to Methfessel, 11 Feb 1971, VC 114.29; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Bishop and Methfessel frequently exchanged ephemera and clippings in their letters. Many of these tokens—such as this hotel stamp—were very small, which exemplifies Susan Rosenbaum’s notion of Bishop as an archivist constructing a “miniature museum.” (Hotel Stamp, VC 116.32; Courtesy of Vassar College)

From a letter, handwritten while traveling in France. Swenson includes a minutely drawn representation of the switchbacks on the Riviera corniches.

Draft of “The Fairy Toll-Taker,” recto. (VC 53.1; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Draft of “The Fairy Toll-Taker,” recto. (VC 53.1; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Bishop copied “Evil Hearted Woman” by Blind Boy Fuller into her notebook. (VC 74.12.1; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Page one of the advertising leaflet for Sapolio soap, an extensively advertised brand popular in the 1930s, where the visual grammar of blackness/dirt and whiteness/cleanliness unfolds over the panels. The image overlaps with page three of the booklet. (VC121.19; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Pages two and three of the Sapolio soap advertising leaflet. (VC121.19; Courtesy of Vassar College)