• The Imperfect Life of T. S. Eliot by Lyndall Gordon
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The Imperfect Life of T. S. Eliot

  • Author
    • Lyndall Gordon
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The most authoritative life of Eliot ever written, by acclaimed biographer Lyndall Gordon

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.

'The most valuable single book yet published about Eliot' Jonathan Raban, Sunday Times

'Subtle and authoritative' Aida Edemariam, Guardian

'Daring, strong and psychologically brilliant' Cynthia Ozick, New Yorker

'An intellectually demanding, sophisticated and distinguished book... Probing and extremely thoughtful' Richard Bernstein, New York Times

'An awesome achievement' Arminta Wallace, Irish Times
  • Published: Jan 16 2025
  • Pages: 688
  • 196 x 128mm
  • ISBN: 9781844088935
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Press Reviews

  • Jonathan Raban

    Sunday Times
    The most valuable single book yet published about Eliot
  • New Yorker
    A nuanced, discerning account of a life famously flawed in its search for perfection

  • Richard Bernstein

    New York Times
    An intellectually demanding, sophisticated and distinguished book . . . Probing and extremely thoughtful

  • Jonathan Raban

    Sunday Times
    The most valuable single book yet published about Eliot
  • New Yorker
    A nuanced, discerning account of a life famously flawed in its search for perfection

  • Richard Bernstein

    New York Times
    An intellectually demanding, sophisticated and distinguished book . . . Probing and extremely thoughtful

  • Aida Edamariam

    Guardian
    Subtle and authoritative

  • Arminta Wallace

    Irish Times
    With this hugely impressive study...Lyndall Gordon blew the door of T.S. Eliot's domesticity wide open...[H]er willingness to allow the poetry to go on working its magic while she stares, unflinching, into the face of the man who wrote it is an awesome achievement
  • Observer
    What would [Eliot] have made of a woman with such profound insight and knowledge as Lyndall Gordon writing his biography, stripping him of his cloak of mysteriousness, and offering credible interpretations of his work?

  • Michiko Kakutani

    New York Times
    A subtle portrait of Eliot as a Jamesian hero torn between memory and desire, worldly happiness and a more rarefied world of the spirit

  • Cynthia Ozick

    New Yorker
    Daring, strong and psychologically brilliant
  • The Times
    A fascinating portrait
  • Booklist
    Balancing sympathy and judgement...Lyndall Gordon plumbs the gap separating Eliot's vision of an otherworldly Absolute from his decidedly terrestrial social views...No mere abridgement or revision of Lyndall Gordon's earlier two-volume biography, this work offers a wealth of new material and fresh insights
  • Boston Globe
    This complex spiritual and artistic history is reconstructed with tact, diligence, and subtlety
  • Cleveland Plain Dealer
    Gordon is the rare modern day biographer who can resist the temptation to make clay feet into a synecdoche for a man. "I propose to look flaws in the face without seeing flaws alone," she says, and she succeeds brilliantly
  • Baltimore Sun
    Gordon manages to be definitive but not dogmatic, sympathetic without taking sides, doorstop thick without seeming too long. It horrifies and fascinates like re-runs of a train wreck
  • Buffalo News
    Among the very best of this century's biographers
  • Times Educational Supplement
    A model of its kind: authoritative, meticulously documented, sensitive alike to poetic and spiritual nuances