Faber to relaunch two iconic books by the celebrated American essayist and novelist Elizabeth Hardwick
Faber will publish Sleepless Nights and Seduction and Betrayal in July 2019. The reissues will feature striking cover designs and new forewords by Eimear McBride and Deborah Levy championing Hardwick’s writing.
Faber describe Sleepless Nights (1979) as “a kaleidoscopic scrapbook of one woman’s memories; a collage of fiction and memoir, letters and essays, portraits and dreams, and one of the greatest New York novels of all time.” Seduction and Betrayal (1974) is Hardwick’s “virtuoso essay collection: a radical portrait of women and literature that dissects the lives of female writers, literary wives, and fictional heroines to probe the cost of creativity”. Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, and Derek Walcott (who called her “the best prose writer in America”) numbered among her loyal fans, while her contemporary admirers include Margo Jefferson, Lauren Groff, and Sally Rooney.
Assistant Editor at Faber, Ella Griffiths said: “I couldn’t be more excited to be relaunching these lost American classics at Faber, which are beautifully introduced by Eimear McBride and Deborah Levy. We have never needed Elizabeth Hardwick – her witty provocations, her blazing stylishness, her deep compassion – more. Whether experiencing her prose for the first time or returning as a loyal reader, I hope that everyone will find something transformative in her writing.’
Elizabeth Hardwick (1916-2007) was born in Kentucky and educated at the University of Kentucky and Columbia. As co-founder of The New York Review of Books, she contributed more than a hundred pieces to the magazine, as well as writing three novels, a biography of Herman Melville, and four collections of essays. She was the recipient of a Gold Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Lifetime Achievement Citation from the National Book Critics Circle. Hardwick was married to the poet Robert Lowell from 1949 to 1972 and their collected correspondence, The Dolphin Letters, will also be published by Faber in 2019.