Lyndall Gordon’s ground-breaking biography THE HYACINTH GIRL: T. S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse has been longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography.
The PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography was established in 2008 by Rodman L. Drake and awards excellence in biography writing. The winning title is considered by the judges to be a work of ‘exceptional literary, narrative, and artistic merit, based on scrupulous research’, with previous winners including the likes of Amy Stanley’s STRANGER IN THE SHOGUN’S CITY and LOOKING FOR LORRAINE by Imani Perry.
The finalists for the 2023 award will be announced in early February and the winner revealed at the annual PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony at New York’s Town Hall on the 2nd of March. The other shortlisted titles for the 2023 award are as follows: AN AMERICAN MARTYR IN PERSIA: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville by Reza Aslan, CIVIL RIGHTS QUEEN: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality by Tomiko Brown-Nagin, DILLA TIME: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm by Dan Charnas, THE ADVENTURES OF HERBIE COHEN by Rich Cohen, G-MAN: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage, GURU TO THE WORLD: The Life and Legacy of Vivekananda by Ruth Harris, MR. B: George Balachine’s 20th Century by Jennifer Homans, THE POPE AT WAR: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer, and SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins by Aidan Levy.
Drawing on the dramatic new material of the only recently unsealed 1,131 letters, THE HYACINTH GIRL casts new light on T. S. Eliot’s life and great poetry, and restores a quiet, talented woman to prominence in literary history.
Virago published the hardback edition of THE HYACINTH GIRL in the UK in October last year, while the American edition was published by W. W. Norton in November. It has received enormous acclaim – from fellow biographers as well as readers and critics – and was highlighted by many publications as being one of the best non-fiction titles of the year. The UK paperback edition will be published in August 2023.
Lyndall also recently appeared in a BBC 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 the celebrated poem. You can read more about the documentary here. Lyndall is one of the luminaries appearing at the T.S .Eliot Summer School in the UK, 8-16 July 2023.
Photo credit: Nina Hollington
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.
Praise for THE HYACINTH GIRL
‘Exemplary… revealed that the great man’s poetry was a lot less impersonal than he led us to believe.’ – Lucasta Miller, The Spectator, ‘Books of the Year’
‘A number of good books have marked the centenary of “The Waste Land”… but, for me, the most brilliant and incisive new book on Eliot is Lyndall Gordon’s The Hyacinth Girl: T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse, which looks at Eliot’s poetry in the light of his recently opened correspondence with Emily Hale.’ – Colm Tóibín, Irish Times, ‘Best Books of the Year’
‘Lyndall Gordon’s sensitive study of Emily Hale, Eliot’s childhood sweetheart in America’ – Iona McLaren, The Telegraph, ‘Best Biographies of 2022’
‘Gordon does an admirable job navigating the ambiguities of the tangled situations she chronicles; she is respectful of complications, of emotional messiness, of unusual attachments. She patiently evokes the intricacy and singularity of each intimate relationship. 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. She is also adept at mapping Eliot’s well-known religious and spiritual yearnings onto the sexual and emotional struggles that fed his beliefs. This is delicate and tricky work, if one is not overly reductive, and Gordon allows the reader to live with Eliot’s conflicts and contradictions. She is not interested in reducing or bludgeoning the mystery of his words, but in exploring layers and resonances.’ – Katie Roiphe, The New York Times
‘Exquisitely nuanced’ – Kathryn Hughes, Sunday Times
‘Lyndall Gordon is the first biographer to uncover the life of T.S. Eliot’s hidden muse, the inspiration of one of his greatest works of poetry …This is a work that will change the way that Eliot is seen.’ – Miranda Seymour, author of I USED TO LIVE HERE ONCE: THE HAUNTED LIFE OF JEAN RHYS
‘There is no finer guide into the mind of T.S. Eliot than Lyndall Gordon. Drawing upon Eliot’s newly unsealed letters to Emily Hale, THE HYACINTH GIRL reimagines one of the great literary love stories of the twentieth century… Thanks to Gordon’s meticulous research and inspired storytelling, we will never read these poems the same way again: It turns out that the great poet of ‘impersonality’ was baring his soul all along. 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
Visit Lyndall’s website.