Elizabeth Bishop and the Literary Archive

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

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Part of the first page of the second draft of Bishop’s unpublished short story "The River-Rat."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

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)

Exterior shot of Bishop’s studio at Samambaia, 1955. (VC 24.5; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Postcard of Hemingway’s House, Key West, to Robert Lowell in 1947. (Harvard MS Am 1905; Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University)

Postcard of Seattle, sent by Bishop to Rosinha Leão, 1966. (VC 113.10; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Bishop’s snide comment on the pages in English in Ruas’s Conhecendo Ouro Prêto. (Vassar, Grille F2651 .O9 R82 1952)

Portion of Bishop's partial translation manuscript of Bernard Malamud's "The Magic Barrel," showing corrections in another hand. (VC 73.7; Courtesy of Vassar College)

From the handwritten draft of Bishop’s translation of The Diary of “Helena Morley,” ms p. 90. (VC 72.4; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Rio bay panoramic postcard to U. T. and Joseph Summers in 1963, with the dredge identified in the water and with two X’s marking the extreme ends of the Parque do Flamengo. (VC 37.4; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Alan Dunn cartoon, The New Yorker, July 29, 1967. (VC 122.7; Courtesy of Vassar College)