What did 'style' mean to Elizabeth Bishop? And what does 'style' mean to contemporary literary criticism? This book breaks ground in three broad areas: first, it provides a new, comprehensive interpretation of Bishop's style, one that considers her poetry, naturally, but also her various prose writings. Second, it incorporates new analyses of common literary techniques-including simile, allusion, cliché and 'correctio' (artificial self-corrections)-into an examination of Bishop's vast reading of writers in several languages from the late medieval period to the present. Third, it models new ways of reading Bishop and other authors, and thus intervenes in debates about the roles of judgement, aesthetics, and politics in literary criticism. Besides the international community of Bishop critics and teachers, Elizabeth Bishop's Styles of Writing will appeal to critics of twentieth-century literature, poetics and women's writing, as well as general readers interested in poetry and literary history, style, and influence.