“Affectionately Yours, Bishop”: The Early Correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop and Rhoda Wheeler Sheehan

Few original records document Elizabeth Bishop's development during her high school and college years (1926–34). This article presents twelve new pieces of correspondence that Bishop wrote to her lifelong friend and classmate, Rhoda Wheeler (later Sheehan), at both Walnut Hill School and Vassar College, together with mentions of Bishop made by Wheeler in forty-six of the weekly letters that she wrote home to her mother during that time. Readers and biographers have turned to Bishop's correspondence to better understand what motivated and inspired her work. The Bishop-Wheeler letters give readers a rare glimpse into the inner world of this enigmatic writer as she was transitioning from a shy, anxious youth to a self-possessed poet.