Born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1915, Isabella Gardner was a great-niece of Isabella Stewart Gardner (who bequeathed a museum to the city of Boston) and a cousin of Robert Lowell. With characteristic self-depreciating humor, Isabella Gardner insisted that she had received a minimal formal education. In fact, she attended the Foxcroft School, the Leighton Rollins School of Acting, and the Embassy School of Acting in London. She was a professional actress for several years and served as associate editor of Poetry from 1952 to 1956. During her lifetime Isabella Gardner published four compact and distinguished books of poetry: Birthdays from the Ocean (1955), The Looking Glass (1961), West of Childhood (1965) and That Was Then: New and Selected Poems (1980), which was nominated for the American Book Award for Poetry. In 1981, shortly before her death, Isabella Gardner was selected as the first recipient of the New York State Walt Whitman Citation of Merit for Poetry.
