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."