T.S. Eliot

Lyndall Gordon's biography of the poet T. S. Eliot pulls together new findings and revised versions of her earlier studies in a single volume. Her research includes many letters that have only recently come to light.

Gordon confronts two uncomfortable aspects of Eliot's character directly: the anti-Semitic views that appear in his life and writing, and a hostility toward women and bodily desire that has received less attention. Eliot's own sense of conflict between physical appetite and suppressed longing runs through her account.

The book gives a detailed picture of Vivienne, Eliot's first wife, and examines the role that various women played in shaping his work. Readers interested in modernist poetry or in the private life behind poems such as The Waste Land will find it of particular interest.