Born in New England, Bishop's earliest years were marked by the death of her father and her mother's subsequent nervous collapse - by the time Bishop was five her mother was confined to a mental institution. After a peripatetic childhood, spent with various relatives, Bishop attended Vassar College and, through the college's librarian, met Marianne Moore who encouraged and influenced her work. A few years later she was introduced to Robert Lowell who became a lifelong friend. An orphan, lesbian, alcoholic and rootless wanderer, Bishop travelled widely, settling for a number of years in Brazil with the poet Lota de Macedo Soares - who eventually committed suicide. Although her life was difficult, occasionally tragic, Bishop rejected self-pity; displacement and exile may be omnipresent but her poetry is controlled, resonant with the subtleness of the descriptions and in its understatement.