T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life

The definitive biography of the twentieth century’s great poet. Praise for the Work of Lyndall Gordon The Hyacinth Girl (2022) “Vibrant. . . . In narrating [Eliot’s] romantic attachments, [Lyndall Gordon] captures his manipulations, his selfishness, what she calls his ‘cruelty,’ without abandoning her mission to understand him and his writing. . . . There is a human richness to Eliot’s cerebral poetry that we can appreciate more in the context of his knotted emotional life, and Gordon’s art is in drawing this out.” — Katie Roiphe,?New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) “The most brilliant and incisive new book on Eliot.” — Colm Tóibín, Irish Times (Best Books of the Year) T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life (1999 Edition) “An intellectually demanding, sophisticated and distinguished book. . . . Probing and extremely thoughtful.” — Richard Bernstein, New York Times Eliot’s New Life (1988) “Writing with judicious sympathy and an intimate knowledge of his poetry and plays, Ms. Gordon artfully moves back and forth between the life and the work, creating a subtle portrait of Eliot as a Jamesian hero torn between memory and desire, worldly happiness and a more rarefied world of the spirit.” — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times “Daring, strong, and psychologically brilliant.” — Cynthia Ozick, The New Yorker Eliot’s Early Years (1977) “The best written account we have of Eliot’s early life and works, and offers an interpretation that commands attention and respect.” — Richard Ellmann T. S. Eliot was arguably the greatest English-language poet of the twentieth century. In poems such as The Waste Land and Four Quartets, he spoke directly to his times, and his essays influenced a whole school of literary criticism. Today, as long-awaited personal papers and letters emerge, there is…