Eliot's New Life

by Lyndall Gordon (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1988

  $3.45

  This book examines T.S. Eliot's search for a new life during the break up of his first marriage, a period marked externally by his entry into the Anglican Church and the exchange of American for British nationality. This work covers the last 38 years of his life, and explores the ties between Eliot's life and work, including his religious life and his relationship with his first love, Emily Hale. Drawing on unpublished papers, the author reveals the central role that Emily Hale played, inspiring some of his great religious poetry. His relationship with Hale, as well as with Mary Trevelyan, who wanted to marry him and who left a memoir of Eliot's years of fame, shed new light on this period of his life. Eliot's inner preoccupations are set in the context of his American past, showing that his native ties, both personal and literary, became more, rather than less important after he relinquished his nationality. These are the years of maturity during which he wrote Four Quartets , Murder in the Cathedral , The Family Reunion and The Cocktail Party . Lyndall Gordon is also the author of Eliot's Early Years (1977) and Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life (1984).

• Used

  Paperback
  1989

  $3.45

  In this sequel to her acclaimed biography of T.S.Eliot, Lyndall Gordon continues her exploration of the ties between Eliot's work and the events and relationships which influenced it. T.S.Eliot's search for a new life after the traumatic break-up of his first marriage was marked externally by his entry into the Anglican Church, and by the exchange of American nationality for British. These two events indicate a break with the past; yet, as Lyndall Gordon's new research shows, Eliot's American ties, both personal and literary, were becoming more, not less, important to him during this period. This inner preoccupation with his past is persuasively traced through the autobiographically revealing early drafts of some of his most mature works The continuing friendship with Emily, the woman who inspired some of his great religious poetry, and with Mary Trevelyan (who, as her memoirs reveal, wanted to marry him), provide the key to a new understanding of Eliot's most inscrutable years.