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

She then entered the PhD program at Columbia University, though withdrew from graduate study in 1941 to concentrate on writing.

She published four books of criticism: A View of My Own (1962), Seduction and Betrayal (1974), Bartleby in Manhattan (1983), and Sight-Readings (1998).

[5] In 2000, she published a short biography, Herman Melville, in Viking Press's Penguin Lives series.

[8][9] From July 28, 1949, until their eventual divorce in 1972, Hardwick was married to Robert Lowell, the Pulitzer Prize‐winning poet from the prominent Boston Brahmin family.