Lyndall Gordon to deliver the T.S. Eliot Lecture 2023

Photo by Nina Hollington

The Annual T.S. Eliot Lecture 2023 will be delivered by celebrated Eliot scholar and author Lyndall Gordon. Based on the recently unsealed Hale letters, Lyndall Gordon’s subject will be ‘T.S. Eliot’s Secrecy: Disguise and the Hidden Drama of Emily Hale’. The Lecture has been brought forward this year, and will be the first time that Lyndall Gordon has lectured on the Emily Hale letters since they were made publicly available.

The Lecture will be given on Thursday 27th April, at 5.30pm, in the T.S. Eliot Theatre at Merton College, Oxford. Merton was the College where Eliot spent his postgraduate year in 1914. Admission to the lecture is free but seats must be reserved here.

In October 2022, Virago Books published the hardback edition of THE HYACINTH GIRL: T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse in the UK. 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. THE HYACINTH GIRL was published by W. W. Norton in the US, and was longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography.

Drawing on the dramatic new material of the only recently unsealed 1,131 letters Eliot wrote to Hale, Lyndall Gordon reveals how Emily Hale becomes the first and consistently important woman of 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. 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.'

Lyndall Gordon is also author of an earlier T.S. Eliot biography, AN IMPERFECT LIFE.

In 2022 Lyndall appeared in a BBC documentary about Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, part of programming across BBC television and radio celebrating 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.

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. Fazi in Italy also published her biography of Charlotte Bronte A PASSIONATE LIFE and have acquired Italian rights to OUTSIDERS.

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.

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.