T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life

T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life

<p><strong>Lyndall Gordon's biographical work on T. S. Eliot has won many dramatic accolades.</strong></p> In this "nuanced, discerning account of a life famously flawed in its search for perfection" (<em>The New Yorker</em>), Gordon captures Eliot's "complex spiritual and artistic history . . . with tact, diligence, and subtlety" (<em>Boston Globe</em>). 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" (<em>The New York Times</em>), and is "definitive but not dogmatic, sympathetic without taking sides. . . . Its voice rings with authority" (<em>Baltimore Sun</em>). 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."