20th century
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Erica Wagner
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Letters of T. S. Eliot
literary biography
Lyndall Gordon
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T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot biography
The Imperfect Life of T. S. Eliot
Product details
- ISBN 9780349012117
- Weight: 820g
- Dimensions: 160 x 236mm
- Publication Date: 06 Oct 2022
- Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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The revealing of T. S. Eliot's hidden muse - Emily Hale, the Hyacinth Girl of the famous The Waste Land poem
'Extraordinary... A rare work of sympathy and insight' Colm Tóibín
'Gordon sifts through the documents with her customary care and delicacy' Frances Wilson, Telegraph
'Thanks to Gordon's meticulous research and inspired storytelling we will never read [Eliot's] poems the same way again' Heather Clark
'Exquisitely nuanced' Kathryn Hughes, Sunday Times
'An illuminating account' Publishers Weekly
'As exciting as a detective story... Gordon establishes the profound influence [the relationship] had upon the substance and in particular upon the imagery of Eliot's work' Margaret Drabble, New Statesman
Among the greatest of poets, T. S. Eliot protected his privacy while publicly associated with three women: two wives and a church-going companion. This presentation concealed a life-long love for an American: Emily Hale, a drama teacher to whom he wrote (and later suppressed) over a thousand letters. Hale was the source of "memory and desire" in The Waste Land; she is the Hyacinth Girl.
Drawing on the dramatic new material of the only recently unsealed 1,131 letters Eliot wrote to Hale, leading biographer Lyndall Gordon reveals a hidden Eliot. Emily Hale now becomes the first and consistently important woman of life -- and his art. Gordon also offers new insight into the other spirited women who shaped him: Vivienne, the flamboyant wife with whom he shared a private wasteland; Mary Trevelyan, his companion in prayer; and Valerie Fletcher, the young disciple to whom he proposed when his relationship with Emily foundered. Eliot kept his women apart as each ignited his transformations as poet, expatriate, convert, and, finally, in his latter years, a man `made for love.'
Emily Hale was at the centre of a love drama he conceived and the inspiration for the lines he wrote to last beyond their time. To read Eliot's twice-weekly letters to Emily during the thirties and forties is to enter the heart of the poet's art.
Lyndall Gordon was born in Cape Town and studied American Literature at Columbia University in New York. She came to England through the Rhodes Trust in 1973.
She is the prize-winning author of biographies including The Imperfect Life of T. S. Eliot; Henry James: His Women and his Art; Charlotte Bronte: A Passionate Life; Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life; Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft; Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family Feuds and Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World. There are also two memoirs, Shared Lives, A Story of Women's Friendship, and Divided Lives, about her mother, whose spiritual journey opened up Eliot's poetry for her. She has written the 'Life' for the Eliot website: tseliot.com.
Lyndall Gordon is a fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in Oxford.
