Cathy Curtis begins her new biography of Elizabeth Hardwick with an author’s note meant to head off trouble:

This biography of Elizabeth Hardwick includes only as much information about her famous husband, the poet Robert Lowell, as is necessary to tell the story of her life. Anyone looking for additional details can consult the three full-scale Lowell biographies by Ian Hamilton (1982), Paul Mariani (1994), and Kay Redfield Jamison (2017).

In response to my letters, Elizabeth’s daughter, Harriet Lowell, wrote that she is “a very private person” and declined to be interviewed. After Harriet came of age and lived independently, Elizabeth rarely mentioned her in letters to friends. For those reasons, she appears more frequently in this biography during her early years.

In short, dear reader, take A Splendid Intelligence: The Life of Elizabeth Hardwickon its own terms. Don’t complain that Lowell, even though his marriage to Hardwick lasted twenty years, is never really the center of attention, except when his intermittent bouts of madness left Hardwick no choice—as far as she could see—but to make the restoration of his health her main job. The old-fashioned term “madness” seems apt for a poet who in his mania expressed admiration for Hitler and was perfectly capable of assaulting anyone who got in his way. Curtis, of course, has to explain why Hardwick put up with a madman, so the biographer quotes Hardwick, who believed that Lowell was not only a great poet but also