Elizabeth Hardwick is one of the most distinguished essayists of her time, a famous member of the Partisan Review group and a founder of The New York Review of Books. She has achieved a unique place in American letters for her sharp and elegant prose style, which The New York Times has described as "miraculous and almost perfect".

"While the grace of Hardwick's prose makes her endlessly readable", the Boston Globe said of her last collection, "the deep focus of her insight, the grasp of her subtle intelligence again and again, make one stop after reading a passage to examine it further, or even a third time and so get all the riches it may have to offer". The focus here is on American writers, at home and abroad, and especially women -- as writers and as characters: Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Margaret Fuller, Mary McCarthy, Katherine Anne Porter, and more.