The leading American Confessional poet Robert Lowell married the brilliant literary critic Elizabeth Hardwick, embarking on a stormy, intellectual twenty-three year marriage. Their relationship was repeatedly tested by Lowell's severe, agonizing bouts of manic-depressive illness, which resulted in regular hospitalizations and highly disruptive public manic episodes. Despite these immense challenges, Hardwick remained his steadfast editor and intellectual anchor until Lowell shockingly abandoned her for the English aristocrat Caroline Blackwood.

Their painful marital dissolution inspired Lowell's highly controversial, Pulitzer Prize-winning 1973 poetry collection 'The Dolphin'. Lowell generated intense ethical debates within modern literature by incorporating Hardwick's actual, private post-divorce letters directly into his poems, permanently redefining the boundaries of raw Confessional verse.