Anne de Courcy honoured with the Biographers’ Club Exceptional Contribution Prize

Picture credit: BookBrunch

We are delighted to announce that celebrated biographer Anne de Courcy is this year’s recipient of the Biographers’ Club Exceptional Contribution Prize, recognizing her exceptional career encompassing eleven books over the past four decades.

Anne was presented with the award at the Biographers’ Club Christmas Party on Monday (11 December 2023), held at Albany in Piccadilly, London. Club chairperson Jane Ridley remarked on Anne’s dedication to the craft across her many works, citing in particular de Courcy's ‘ground-breaking’ SNOWDON: THE BIOGRAPHY, as well as the support she has offered over the years to both aspiring and established biographers.

The Biographers’ Club was founded in 1997 to support, promote and connect literary biographers throughout the research and writing process and their careers. The Exceptional Contribution prize has been awarded by the Club annually since 2009, with Anne joining the ranks of honourees including Michael Holroyd, Selina Hastings, Claire Tomalin, Hermione Lee, and 2022 winner A.N. Wilson.

About Anne de Courcy

Anne de Courcy is a well-known writer, journalist and book reviewer. In the 1970s she was Woman’s Editor on the London Evening News until its demise in 1980, when she joined the Evening Standard as a columnist and feature-writer. In 1982 she joined the Daily Mail as a feature writer, with a special interest in historical subjects, leaving in 2003 to concentrate on books, on which she has talked widely both here and in the United States.

A critically-acclaimed and best-selling author, she believes that as well as telling the story of its subject’s life, a biography should depict the social history of the period, since so much of action and behaviour is governed not simply by obvious financial, social and physical conditions but also by underlying, often unspoken, contemporary attitudes, assumptions, standards and moral codes.

Anne sits on the committee of the Biographer’s Club, and was previously the chairperson of the group. Her recent biographies, all of which have been serialised, include THE VICEROY’S DAUGHTERS, DIANA MOSLEY, DEBS AT WAR and SNOWDON; THE BIOGRAPHY, written with the agreement and co-operation of the Earl of Snowdon. Based on Anne’s book, a Channel 4 documentary Snowdon and Margaret: Inside a Royal Marriage, was broadcast in June 2008.

THE FISHING FLEET: HUSBAND-HUNTING IN THE RAJ, was published in July 2012. Her book, MARGOT AT WAR published in November 2014, was shortlisted for the Paddy Power Political Book of the Year award. Her latest book is FIVE LOVE AFFAIRS AND A FRIENDSHIP (published in the US as MAGNIFICENT REBEL), a biography of Jazz Age icon Nancy Cunard.

Praise for Anne de Courcy

‘De Courcy paints a rich canvas.’ – The Sunday Times

‘Meticulously researched and sparklingly witty’ – Jane Shilling, Must Reads, Daily Mail

‘Anne de Courcy combines the perseverance of a social historian with the panache of the novelist’ – The Times

‘Intoxicating descriptions… meticulous detail’ – New York Times

‘She can make you laugh or break your heart, but she will never bore you.’ – Martin Rubin, The Washington Times

‘Anne de Courcy has a humorous tone, which I find very engaging, and she draws research from letters, memories and diaries.’ – Santa Montefiore, Good Housekeeping, ‘The Books That Changed My Life’

Visit Anne's website

Lyndall Gordon on T.S. Eliot in new book THE HYACINTH GIRL and The Waste Land documentary

Last week Lyndall Gordon’s THE HYACINTH GIRL: T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse was published by Virago in the UK in a beautiful hardback edition. Norton will publish in the US in November 2022. Colm Tóibín has hailed it as ‘brilliant … a rare work of sympathy and insight’ and Pulitzer finalist and Sylvia Plath biographer Heather Clark called it a ‘brilliant and revelatory work from one of our greatest biographers’, adding that ‘there is no finer guide into the mind of T.S. Eliot than Lyndall Gordon.’

This week Lyndall Gordon also appears in a new documentary about Eliot’s The Waste Land, which forms part of programming across BBC television and radio designed to celebrate the centenary of the publication of Eliot’s great long poem, The Waste Land. Directed by Susanna White, ‘T.S. Eliot – Into The Waste Land’, uncovers for the first time the hidden personal story behind Eliot’s creation of his celebrated poem. The documentary airs on BBC2 on Thursday 13th October at 9pm and is an Oxford Films production for the BBC, commissioned by BBC Arts Editor Mark Bell and produced by Rosie Alison and executive producer Nick Kent. You can watch the documentary here: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001d1yy/ts-eliot-into-the-waste-land

Along with Lyndall’s illuminating insights, there are contributions from actor and director Fiona Shaw and composer Max Richter; poets Hannah Sullivan and Daljit Nagra; Vivien Eliot's biographer Ann Pasternak Slater and Faber Poetry Editor Matthew Hollis, among others. Simon Russell Beale performs specially recorded readings of the poem, in conjunction with Eliot's own reading of his work. Moving through all five sections of the poem, the documentary explores many different facets of The Waste Land, from Eliot's state of mind during each phase, to the different places where it was composed.

Jahan Ramazani, author of POETRY IN A GOLDEN AGE wrote this of Lyndall’s work: ‘Beautifully written, fiercely honest, THE HYACINTH GIRL permanently dissolves the myth of impersonality, fathoming the vexed, tormented emotional life behind Eliot’s work.’

Among the greatest of poets, T. S. Eliot protected his privacy while publicly associated with three women: two wives and a church-going companion. At the same time he concealed a life-long love for a fourth woman, 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 – as Lyndall writes, she is ‘the Hyacinth Girl’, in the memorable phrase from Eliot’s work.

Drawing on the dramatic new material of the recently unsealed 1,131 letters Eliot wrote to Hale, Lyndall Gordon reveals a hidden Eliot. In The Telegraph, Frances Wilson speaks of Lyndall Gordon’s ‘subtle readings’ and ‘customary care and delicacy’ in sifting through the documents and ‘tracing Hale’s influence throughout Eliot’s poetry’. In THE HYACINTH GIRL, Emily Hale is shown to be a quiet yet vital force, a consistently important woman in Eliot’s 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, and with whom he lived happily till his death. Eliot kept these women in his life very separate, as each ignited his transformations as poet, expatriate, convert, and, finally, in his latter years, a man `made for love’.

Listen to Lyndall Gordon talking about The Waste Land on Woman’s Hour (at 46 minutes) in September, and Susanna White talking about the BBC documentary on the Today programme (at 2 hours 55 minutes).

Further Praise for THE HYACINTH GIRL

‘The true nature of T. S. Eliot's love for his American muse, Emily Hale, has been nearly wholly hidden until now.  In THE HYACINTH GIRL, Lyndall Gordon paints an astute portrait of Eliot as a man trapped between desire and propriety, between a past history of emotional damage and a seemingly impossible future of romantic contentment. Gordon illuminates Eliot's writing through the prism of his correspondence with Hale, demonstrating how central she is to a real understanding of the man and his work. A revelatory book.’ – Erica Wagner, author MARY AND MR ELIOT

'An illuminating account' – Publishers Weekly

‘There is no finer guide into the mind of T.S. Eliot than Lyndall Gordon... Thanks to Gordon’s meticulous research and inspired storytelling, we will never read these poems the same way again… Emily Hale, too, finally gets her due in this brilliant and revelatory work from one of our greatest biographers.’ – Heather Clark, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist RED COMET: THE SHORT LIFE AND BLAZING ART OF SYLVIA PLATH

‘Extraordinary… THE HYACINTH GIRL is a rare work of sympathy and insight. Lyndall Gordon's passionately intelligent engagement with the letters between T.S. Eliot and Emily Hale is matched by her close reading of Eliot's poems. Her ability to see both complexity and simplicity in the relationship between Eliot and Hale means that their entangled world comes fully alive in this brilliant book.’ – Colm Tóibín, author of THE MAGICIAN

‘Gordon sifts through the remaining documents with her customary care and delicacy … tracing Hale’s influence throughout the poetry, aware that her interpretations of character are based on one side of a correspondence… Gordon’s subtle readings never lose sight of the central mystery: why did Hale stay in a relationship that offered no future? The answer is that the letters had become her life, and it was as evidence of that that she chose to save them.’ – Frances Wilson, The Telegraph

‘Often in biography the supporting cast is forgotten once the author’s gaze moves on and women can be ignored in favour of the men who play more traditional roles. This is not the case with THE HYACINTH GIRL … Gordon, in her tracing of Hale’s life to its end – she never married and pursued a career as a teacher, actor and director – reminds us that she lived her own life, made her own choices and ‘would not want our pity’. She may have been Eliot’s Hyacinth girl but she was considerably more.  These books don’t undermine Eliot’s life or his achievement. Instead, they set him in a wider context, connecting him to the women who contributed so much to his success and paid a high price for doing so.’ – Tom Williams, The Spectator

‘An indispensable study that will inspire new perspectives on Eliot’s life and work for generations to come.’ – Anita Patterson, Professor of English, Boston University

‘THE HYACINTH GIRL is an elegant meditation on the women whose lives were fundamental to the life of T. S. Eliot. Lyndall Gordon has given us the fullest account yet of Eliot’s strained and distant relationship with his onetime sweetheart Emily Hale… Together with her account of Eliot’s subsequent marriage to Valerie Fletcher, who had been his secretary, these give a painfully intimate look at the poet, one that also results in significant reassessments of his most imposing poems.’ – Michael North, Professor of English, University of California, and editor of the NORTON CRITICAL EDITION OF THE WASTE LAND AND OTHER POEMS

‘Like an unopened Egyptian tomb, a trove of TS Eliot’s letters has lurked for decades in the Princeton Library. Lyndall Gordon has now cracked it open, and in THE HYACINTH GIRL reveals a treasure of new insights into this most emblematic modern poet. If you thought you knew Eliot, think again.’ – Benjamin Moser, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of SONTAG: HER LIFE AND WORK 

‘In an engrossing study of art refracting life, Lyndall Gordon explores the conflicted emotions that Eliot translated into his ostensibly impersonal art.’ – Leo Damrosch, author of ADVENTURER: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GIACOMO CASANOVA

About Lyndall Gordon

A much-celebrated biographer, Lyndall Gordon lives in Oxford. Her ability to make the subjects of her biographies come vividly to life has won her many literary awards, including the Cheltenham Prize and the James Tait Black prize. She has also been longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and the Comisso Prize in Italy for her Emily Dickinson biography LIVE LIKE LOADED GUNS.

Her previous biographical work on T.S. Eliot – two biographies, ELIOT’S EARLY YEARS and ELIOT’S NEW LIFE, incorporated into an updated edition, THE IMPERFECT LIFE OF T.S. ELIOT – won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize and Southern Arts prize. THE IMPERFECT LIFE OF T.S Eliot was also selected by the New York Public Library as one of 25 'Books to Remember' from 2000 and by the Independent on Sunday as one of the '30 best biographies of the twentieth century'. Translator Xu Xiaofan won the Lu Xun Literary Prize for her translation of THE IMPERFECT LIFE OF T.S. ELIOT, published in China by Shanghai Literature and Art.

Candia McWilliam calls Lyndall Gordon 'a rare phenomenon: a biographer whose preoccupations and authorial career reveal a flowering towards imaginative truth.' Brenda Maddox talks of her 'adventurous scholarship'.

Visit Lyndall Gordon’s website here. 

LYNDALL GORDON’S GROUP BIOGRAPHY, OUTSIDERS, NOW OUT IN PAPERBACK

OUTSIDERS, Lyndall Gordon’s visionary interlinked biography of five female writers and the experiences that shaped them, is available in paperback from Virago. Described as a ‘thought-provoking group biography’ in The New Statesmen by Erica Wagner and as a book written with ‘passionate intelligence’ by Tessa Hadley in The Guardian, OUTSIDERS was included in New Statesman, Books Live and The Irish Times Books of the Year lists in 2017.

OUTSIDERS tells the stories of five novelists – Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner, Virginia Woolf – and their famous novels. We have long known their individual greatness but in linking their creativity to their lives as outsiders, this group biography throws new light on the genius they share. At that time a woman's reputation was her security and each of these five lost it. But as writers, they made the identities of ‘outsider’, ‘outlaw’, ‘outcast’, their own, taking advantage of their separation from the dominant order to write their brilliant books. What they have in common also is the way they inform one another, and us, across the generations.  Lyndall Gordon names each of these five as prodigy, visionary, outlaw, orator and explorer and shows how they came, they saw and left us changed.

Lyndall has attended a number of festivals and literary events to discuss these inspirational women, including the Bath Festival and Cambridge Literary Festival. Lyndall will be giving the Annual Burnt Norton Lecture at The T. S. Eliot International Summer School in July, discussing the prestigious writer and the women in his life. Rights to OUTSIDERS have recently been acquired by Larrad in Spain and Shanghai Literature & Art Publishing House in China.

Lyndall Gordon's biographies have always shown the indelible connection between life and art: an intuitive, exciting and revealing approach that has been highly praised and much read and enjoyed Like all Lyndall’s books OUTSIDERS will continue to delight and inspire readers for a long time to come.

Praise for OUTSIDERS:

‘Fascinating… The strength of spirit of these outsiders shines from the pages and through the ages as Gordon takes us deep inside their minds, hearts, and books.’ — Anita Sethi, The Observer

‘As the role of women undergoes yet another convulsion, it’s good to read, in Lyndall Gordon’s OUTSIDERS, of the robust intelligence of five women who made a powerful contribution. The work and lives of Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Mary Shelley, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf are well known. Gordon’s thesis sets out just how original and brave they were – and at what cost. We owe them much.’ — Joan Bakewell, New Statesman, Books of the Year 2017

‘I love how Lyndall Gordon thinks and I love the clarity and reach of her writing, combining imaginative audacity with scholarly scruple. Her OUTSIDERS, a collection of portraits of George Eliot, Emily Brontë, Virginia Woolf, Olive Schreiner and Mary Shelley, builds into a lucid meditation on how certain writers become lighthouses for each other.’ — Joseph O’Connor, Irish Times Books of the Year 2017

‘Visionary, beautiful’ — Karina Szczurek, Books Live, The best books of 2017 

‘A lively and enterprising group biography’ — Catherine Taylor, Financial Times

Lyndall Gordon’s OUTSIDERS out from Virago today

Lyndall Gordon’s brilliant new interlinking biography OUTSIDERS: FIVE WOMEN WRITERS WHO CHANGED THE WORLD is published in the UK by Virago in hardback and as an audiobook today, with the trade paperback out in South Africa and Australia soon too.

OUTSIDERS explores the moments of darkness that fuelled the creative genius of five literary women: Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf, all of whom stepped outside the bounds of propriety, challenging social norms and enduring scorn and rejection as a result. OUTSIDERS has already received positive reviews with Claire Lowdon commenting in The Times, that ‘the overlap and interplay between the generations is richly evoked’ and Tessa Hadley praising Lyndall in The Guardian as a ‘natural storyteller… with passionate intelligence.’

At Manchester Literature Festival on 16 October, Lyndall was in conversation with Libby Tempest at The Portico Library about her latest biography. Attending the event, Emma Yates Bradley of Northern Soul said ‘There was something restorative about listening to Gordon talk about these wonderful, smart, capable, literary women – these outsiders.’

Lyndall will be attending several literary festivals over the coming months to discuss the inter-connected biography and the women who shaped it. These include the Oxford Literature Festival on 24 March and Bath Festival on 12 and 13 May 2018. She will also be in South Africa in November this year.

Early next year, 3 February 2018, Lyndall will be focusing on one of these literary greats in her talk VIRGINIA WOOLF: ‘MADNESS’, WAR AND TRAUMA at Bethlem Museum of the Mind. To mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, Lyndall will also be reading from OUTSIDERS at the National Theatre. OUTSIDERS release coincides with a number of important centenaries for its subjects. Virago Podcast will be recording an episode with Lyndall, centring on Mary Shelley and the creation of FRANKENSTEIN.

Lyndall has written several acclaimed biographies, documenting the lives of notable female literary figures like Charlotte Brontë, Mary Wollstonecraft and Emily Dickinson, and related fascinating accounts from her own life in the memoirs DIVIDED LIVES and SHARED LIVES, all published by Virago. She has been longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and the Comisso Prize in Italy for her Emily Dickinson biography, LIVES LIKE LOADED GUNS, which has recently been republished by Fazi in a new edition. Spanish publisher Gatopardo recently acquired rights for her biography of Virginia Woolf, A WRITER’S LIFE. Her work has been sold in translation in Italy, Germany, Turkey, China and Spain.

Visit Lyndall’s website.

Praise for Lyndall Gordon:

‘A biographer with soul, she reaches into the hearts of those she brings alive for us. She makes the meaning of their lives sing and sweat as she invites us into their experiences, their longings, their struggles and their disappointments.’ – Susie Orbach, The Observer

‘Gordon is one of the best biographers writing today.’ – Catherine Hollis, Sacramento Book Review

‘A gifted storyteller.’ – Carmela Ciuraru, Miami Herald