The Imperfect Life of T. S. Eliot

Highly acclaimed when it was first published, Virago now reissues Lyndall Gordon's wonderful biography, THE IMPERFECT LIFT OF T.S. ELIOT. Exploring Eliot's poetry, drama and essays in relation to his life in America and England, and to four quite different women who offer clues to his guarded character, this biography sees life and work as reciprocal parts of one design, the search for faith. Eliot once spoke of a lifetime burning in every moment. He had the mind to conceive a perfect life, and he also had the honesty to admit that he could not meet it. Here, close up, is the divide between saint and sinner in the greatest poet of the twentieth century. By viewing Eliot from the vantage point of the next century, this enduring book follows the trials of a searcher whose flaws and doubts speak to all of us whose lives are imperfect.

About the Author :
Lyndall Gordon is the prizewinning biographer of people such as Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf and Mary Wollstonecraft. Born and raised in South Africa, Lyndall is a fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford.

Review :
The most valuable single book yet published about Eliot Subtle and authoritative A nuanced, discerning account of a life famously flawed in its search for perfection Daring, strong and psychologically brilliant An intellectually demanding, sophisticated and distinguished book . . . Probing and extremely thoughtful With this hugely impressive study...Lyndall Gordon blew the door of T.S. Eliot's domesticity wide open...[H]er willingness to allow the poetry to go on working its magic while she stares, unflinching, into the face of the man who wrote it is an awesome achievement What would [Eliot] have made of a woman with such profound insight and knowledge as Lyndall Gordon writing his biography, stripping him of his cloak of mysteriousness, and offering credible interpretations of his work? A subtle portrait of Eliot as a Jamesian hero torn between memory and desire, worldly happiness and a more rarefied world of the spirit A fascinating portrait Balancing sympathy and judgement...Lyndall Gordon plumbs the gap separating Eliot's vision of an otherworldly Absolute from his decidedly terrestrial social views...No mere abridgement or revision of Lyndall Gordon's earlier two-volume biography, this work offers a wealth of new material and fresh insights This complex spiritual and artistic history is reconstructed with tact, diligence, and subtlety Gordon is the rare modern day biographer who can resist the temptation to make clay feet into a synecdoche for a man. "I propose to look flaws in the face without seeing flaws alone," she says, and she succeeds brilliantly Gordon manages to be definitive but not dogmatic, sympathetic without taking sides, doorstop thick without seeming too long. It horrifies and fascinates like re-runs of a train wreck Among the very best of this century's biographers A model of its kind: authoritative, meticulously documented, sensitive alike to poetic and spiritual nuances The most valuable single book yet published about Eliot A nuanced, discerning account of a life famously flawed in its search for perfection An intellectually demanding, sophisticated and distinguished book . . . Probing and extremely thoughtful