T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life

Lyndall Gordon’s biographical work on T. S. Eliot has won many dramatic accolades. In this “nuanced, discerning account of a life famously flawed in its search for perfection” ( The New Yorker ), Gordon captures Eliot’s “complex spiritual and artistic history . . . with tact, diligence, and subtlety” ( Boston Globe ). Drawing on recently discovered letters, she addresses in full the issue of Eliot’s anti-Semitism as well as the less-noted issue of his misogyny. Her account “rescues both the poet and the man from the simplifying abstractions that have always been applied to him” ( The New York Times ), and is “definitive but not dogmatic, sympathetic without taking sides. . . . Its voice rings with authority” ( Baltimore Sun ). Praised by Cynthia Ozick as “daring, strong, psychologically brilliant,” Gordon’s study remains true to the mysteries of art as she chronicles the poet’s “insistent search for salvation.”