Prodigy, visionary, 'outlaw,' orator and explorer. As society's outsiders, the exceptional subjects of this study inspired a new breed of women—and one another. Finalist of the PROSE Award for Best Book in Literature by the Association of American Publishers Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf: they all wrote dazzling books that forever changed the way we see history. In Outsiders, award-winning biographer Lyndall Gordon shows how these five novelists shared more than talent. In a time when a woman's reputation was her security, each of these women lost hers. They were unconstrained by convention, writing against the grain of their contemporaries, prophetically imagining a different future. We have long known the individual greatness of each of these writers, but in linking their creativity to their lives as outcasts, Gordon throws new light on the genius they share. All five lost their mothers in childbirth or at a young age. With no female role model present, they learned from books—and sometimes from an enlightened mentor. Crucially, each had to imagine what a woman could be in order to invent a voice of her own. The passion in their own lives infused their fiction. Writing with passionate intelligence of her own, Gordon reveals that these renegade writers inspired a new breed of women who wished to change a world locked in war, violence, exploitation, and sexual abuse. Gordon's biographies have always shown the indelible connection between life and art: an intuitive, exciting and revealing approach that has been highly praised. In Outsiders, she crafts nuanced portraits of Shelley, Brontë, Eliot, Schreiner and Woolf, naming each of these writers as prodigy, visionary, 'outlaw,' orator, and explorer, and shows how they came, they saw, and they left us changed. Today, following the tsunami of women's protest at widespread abuse, we do more than read them; we listen and live with their astonishing bravery and eloquence.
In 1882, Emily Dickinson's brother Austin began a passionate love affair with Mabel Todd, a young Amherst faculty wife, setting in motion a series of events that would forever change the lives of the Dickinson family. The feud that erupted as a result has continued for over a century. Lyndall Gordon, an award-winning biographer, tells the riveting story of the Dickinsons, and reveals Emily as a very different woman from the pale, lovelorn recluse that exists in the popular imagination. Thanks to unprecedented use of letters, diaries, and legal documents, Gordon digs deep into the life and work of Emily Dickinson, to reveal the secret behind the poet's insistent seclusion, and presents a woman beyond her time who found love, spiritual sustenance, and immortality all on her own terms. An enthralling story of creative genius, filled with illicit passion and betrayal, Lives Like Loaded Guns is sure to cause a stir among Dickinson's many devoted readers and scholars.
Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography "The most brilliant and incisive new book on Eliot." —Colm Tóibín, Irish Times Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, T.S. Eliot was considered the greatest English-language poet of his generation. His poems The Waste Land and Four Quartets are classics of the modernist canon, while his essays influenced a school of literary criticism. Raised in St. Louis, shaped by his youth in Boston, he reinvented himself as an Englishman after converting to the Anglican Church. Like the authoritative yet restrained voice in his prose, he was the epitome of reserve. But there was another side to Eliot, as acclaimed biographer Lyndall Gordon reveals in her new biography, The Hyacinth Girl. While married twice, Eliot had an almost lifelong love for Emily Hale, an American drama teacher to whom he wrote extensive, illuminating, deeply personal letters. She was the source of “memory and desire” in The Waste Land. She was his hidden muse. That correspondence—some 1,131 letters—released by Princeton University’s Firestone Library only in 2020—shows us in exquisite detail the hidden Eliot. Gordon plumbs the archive to recast Hale’s role as the first and foremost woman of the poet’s life, tracing the ways in which their ardor and his idealization of her figured in his art. For Eliot’s relationships, as Gordon explains, were inextricable from his poetry, and Emily Hale was not the sole woman who entered his work. Gordon sheds new light on Eliot’s first marriage to the flamboyant Vivienne; re-creates his relationship with Mary Trevelyan, a wartime woman of action; and finally, explores his marriage to the young Valerie Fletcher, whose devotion to Eliot and whose physical ease transformed him into a man “made for love.” This stunning portrait of Eliot will compel not only a reassessment of the man—judgmental, duplicitous, intensely conflicted, and indubitably brilliant—but of the role of the choice women in his life and his writings. And at the center was Emily Hale in a love drama that Eliot conceived and the inspiration for the poetry he wrote that would last beyond their time. She was his “Hyacinth Girl.
Lyndall Gordon was born in 1941 in Cape Town, a place from which `a ship takes fourteen days to reach anywhere that matters'. Born to a mother whose mysterious illness confined her for years to life indoors, Lyndall was her secret sharer, a child who grew to know life through books, story-telling and her mother's own writings. It was an exciting, precious world, pure and rich in dreams and imagination - untainted by the demands of reality. But a daughter grows up. Despite her own inability to leave home for long, Lyndall's mother believed in migration, a belief that became almost a necessity once the horrors of apartheid gripped their country. Lyndall loves the rocks, the sea, the light of Cape Town, but, struggling to achieve a life approved by her mother, she tries and makes a failure of living in Israel and then, back once again in her beloved South Africa she marries and moves with her husband to New York. It's in America in 1968 when suddenly Lyndall realises she cannot be, and does not want to be, the woman, the daughter and the mother her mother wants her to be. This is a wonderfully layered memoir about the expectations of love and duty between mother and daughter. The particular time and place, the people and the situation are Lyndall's, but the division between generations, the pain and the joy of being a daughter are everywoman's.
T. S. 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 he could not meet it. 'He was a man of extremes whose deep flaws and high virtues were interfused,' writes Lyndall Gordon in this perceptive and innovative biography of the great poet. She brilliantly explores his poetry, drama and essays in relationship to the four quite different women in his life and to his time in America and England. The Imperfect Life of T.S. Eliot follows the trials of a searcher whose flaws and doubts speak to all of us whose lives are imperfect.
Consists of the author's earlier two books on Elliot, Eliot's early years and, Eliot's new life, revised and updated throughout with important new material.
In this stunning new biography of the eighteenth-century writer Mary Wollstonecraft, Lyndall Gordon explores the life of a woman often criticised by biographers, historians and feminists alike. Gordon challenges such slanders, and portrays instead the genius of this extraordinary woman. The two-generation approach to her life examines not only Wollstonecraft herself, but also her effect on her daughters and heirs (Mary Shelley, Fanny Imlay, Claire Clairmont and Margaret Mount Cashell), and the ways in which they carried her influence into subsequent generations. Gordon takes stock of Wollstonecraft's life in accord with her own values rather than through the reputation history has given her. The author looks at her important relationships with Gilbert Imlay and William Godwin, and her ideas about issues such as the problems of communication between the sexes and parenthood. Through this brilliant study, Gordon, the author of biographies of Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Brontë among others, successfully reinterprets Mary Wollstonecraft for the twenty-first century.
Lyndall Gordon, the acclaimed biographer of T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf, grew up in Cape Town, South Africa in the 1950s. This intimate and moving memoir is the story of Rosie, Ellie, and Romy- her closest friends from childhood until their early deaths. Daughters of Jewish immigrants, these girls grew into adulthood together, shaped by their parents' and grandparents' Eastern European heritages, the stifling atmosphere of their proper girls' school, South Africa's politics, and the intense pressure within their bourgeois milieu for early marriage. Though miles distanced them as they grew older and went off to New York, Oxford and Paris, their bonds of friendship remained strong, separated only by their untimely deaths.
The] contradictions in Bronte] s] life are not only fully chronicled by Lyndall Gordon s splendid new biography, but also gracefully explicated to give the reader a vivid and emotionally detailed portrait of the novelist and her work. . . . Gordon] chooses to use her imaginative sympathies honed to precision with earlier biographies of Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot to delineate her subject s rich interior life. Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
James's friendship with Constance Fenimore Woolson ended in 1894 when he tried to drown a boatload of her dresses in the Venetian lagoon; she had fallen to her death three months before. It was an elusive friendship that echoed his mysterious relationship with Minny Temple who had died twenty years earlier. From their graves, these two women haunted his imagination and his fiction, inspiring the creation of his heroines.
This is the story of three girls who grew up in Cape Town in the 1950s. They were shaped by the South African past, the absurdities of a girls' school, and the pressures to marry at an early age. All three died young.
In this stunning new biography of the eighteenth- century writer Mary Wollstonecraft, Lyndall Gordon explores the life of a woman often criticised by biographers, historians and feminists alike. Gordon challenges such slanders, and portrays instead the genius of this extraordinary woman. The two-generation approach to her life examines not only Wollstonecraft herself, but also her effect on her daughters and heirs (Mary Shelley, Fanny Imlay, Claire Clairmont and Margaret Mount Cashell), and the ways in which they carried her influence into subsequent generations. Gordon takes stock of Wollstonecraft's life in accord with her own values rather than through the reputation history has given her. The author looks at her important relationships with Gilbert Imlay and William Godwin, and her ideas about issues such as the problems of communication between the sexes and parenthood.
Focuses on the writer's later years, exploring the dichotomy of his religious convictions and stormy nature, as well as his relationships with Emily Hale and Mary Trevelyan and the influence of an American ethos on his views
Lyndall Gordon presents a new and intimate kind of biography, telling the story of Henry James' life through the lens of two strange and elusive relationships which crucially influenced his art.
As a child, I'm to be my mother's "sister" because she wants one so. My part is to be there if she's ill. At four years old, it's a privilege to have this responsibility instead of trotting off to nursery school like other children.' So begins the renowned and award-wining biographer's book about her own life - particularly in relationship to her mother - an extraordinary and intensely realised tale of loyalty and division; breakdown and recovery; migration and home. Lyndall Gordon was born in 1941 in Cape Town, a place from which `a ship takes fourteen days to reach anywhere that matters'. Born to a mother whose mysterious illness confined her for years to life indoors, Lyndall was her secret sharer, a child who grew to know life through books, story-telling and her mother's own writings. It was an exciting, precious world, pure and rich in dreams and imagination - untainted by the demands of reality. But a daughter grows up. Despite her own inability to leave home for long, Lyndall's mother believed in migration, a belief that became almost a necessity once the horrors of apartheid gripped their country. Lyndall loves the rocks, the sea, the light of Cape Town, but, struggling to achieve a life approved by her mother, she tries and makes a failure of living in Israel and then, back once again in her beloved South Africa she marries and moves with her husband to New York. It's in America in 1968 when suddenly Lyndall realises she cannot be, and does not want to be, the woman, the daughter and the mother her mother wants her to be. This is a wonderfully layered memoir about the expectations of love and duty between mother and daughter. The particular time and place, the people and the situation are Lyndall's, but the division between generations, the pain and the joy of being a daughter are everywoman's.
“Wonderful, and deeply sobering. . . . Lyndall Gordon relates Wollstonecraft’s story with the same potent mixture of passion and reason her subject personified.”—New York Times Book Review The founder of modern feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was the most famous woman in Europe and America in her time. Yet her reputation over the years has suffered—until now. Acclaimed biographer Lyndall Gordon mounts a spirited defense of this brilliant, unconventional woman who held strikingly modern notions of education, single motherhood, family responsibilities, working life, domestic affections, friendships, and sexual relationships. Offering a new interpretation for the 21st century, Gordon paints a vibrant, full portrait of Wollstonecraft, revealing how this remarkable woman’s genius reverberated through the generations, influencing not only her daughter, Mary Shelley, and other heirs, but early political philosophy in England and America as well—including the ideas of John and Abigail Adams.
Prodigy, visionary, 'outlaw,' orator and explorer. As society's outsiders, the exceptional subjects of this study inspired a new breed of women—and one another. Finalist of the PROSE Award for Best Book in Literature by the Association of American Publishers Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf: they all wrote dazzling books that forever changed the way we see history. In Outsiders, award-winning biographer Lyndall Gordon shows how these five novelists shared more than talent. In a time when a woman's reputation was her security, each of these women lost hers. They were unconstrained by convention, writing against the grain of their contemporaries, prophetically imagining a different future. We have long known the individual greatness of each of these writers, but in linking their creativity to their lives as outcasts, Gordon throws new light on the genius they share. All five lost their mothers in childbirth or at a young age. With no female role model present, they learned from books—and sometimes from an enlightened mentor. Crucially, each had to imagine what a woman could be in order to invent a voice of her own. The passion in their own lives infused their fiction. Writing with passionate intelligence of her own, Gordon reveals that these renegade writers inspired a new breed of women who wished to change a world locked in war, violence, exploitation, and sexual abuse. Gordon's biographies have always shown the indelible connection between life and art: an intuitive, exciting and revealing approach that has been highly praised. In Outsiders, she crafts nuanced portraits of Shelley, Brontë, Eliot, Schreiner and Woolf, naming each of these writers as prodigy, visionary, 'outlaw,' orator, and explorer, and shows how they came, they saw, and they left us changed. Today, following the tsunami of women's protest at widespread abuse, we do more than read them; we listen and live with their astonishing bravery and eloquence.
In 1882, Emily Dickinson's brother Austin began a passionate love affair with Mabel Todd, a young Amherst faculty wife, setting in motion a series of events that would forever change the lives of the Dickinson family. The feud that erupted as a result has continued for over a century. Lyndall Gordon, an award-winning biographer, tells the riveting story of the Dickinsons, and reveals Emily as a very different woman from the pale, lovelorn recluse that exists in the popular imagination. Thanks to unprecedented use of letters, diaries, and legal documents, Gordon digs deep into the life and work of Emily Dickinson, to reveal the secret behind the poet's insistent seclusion, and presents a woman beyond her time who found love, spiritual sustenance, and immortality all on her own terms. An enthralling story of creative genius, filled with illicit passion and betrayal, Lives Like Loaded Guns is sure to cause a stir among Dickinson's many devoted readers and scholars.
The] contradictions in Bronte] s] life are not only fully chronicled by Lyndall Gordon s splendid new biography, but also gracefully explicated to give the reader a vivid and emotionally detailed portrait of the novelist and her work. . . . Gordon] chooses to use her imaginative sympathies honed to precision with earlier biographies of Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot to delineate her subject s rich interior life. Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
Consists of the author's earlier two books on Elliot, Eliot's early years and, Eliot's new life, revised and updated throughout with important new material.
This book examines issues ranging from global and domestic climate change and sustainable energy issues to the mineral-energy complex issues that have given rise to local and sector-specific problems.
Lyndall Gordon presents a new and intimate kind of biography, telling the story of Henry James' life through the lens of two strange and elusive relationships which crucially influenced his art.
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