Lyndall Gordon

Lyndall Gordon
Citizenship	Cape Town
Education	University of Cape Town Columbia University
Occupations	academic writer, literary biographies
Notable work	The Hyacinth Girl: T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse (2022

Lyndall Gordon (born 4 November 1941) ^[1] is a British-based biographical and former academic writer, known for her literary biographies. She is a senior research fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford. ^[2]

Life

Born in Cape Town, she had her undergraduate studies at the University of Cape Town and her doctorate at Columbia University in New York City. She is married to pathologist, Siamon Gordon; they have two daughters.^{[ citation needed ]}

Gordon is the author of Eliot's Early Years (1977), which won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize; ^[3] Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life (1984), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life (1994), winner of the Cheltenham Prize for Literature; and Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft , shortlisted for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize. Her most recent publications are Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her Family's Feuds (2010), which has challenged established assumptions about the poet's life; ^[4] Shared Lives: Growing Up in 50s Cape Town (D. Philip Publishers, 1992); Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and a Daughter (London: Virago, 2014); and Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World (London: Virago, 2017).

She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002. ^[5]

Gordon's most recent work is The Hyacinth Girl: T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse (2022).^{[ citation needed ]}

Works

• Eliot's Early Years. Oxford University Press, 1977. ISBN   978-0-19-812078-0 ^{[6] [7] [8]}
• Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life. Oxford University Press. 1984. ISBN   978-0-19-811723-0.; W. W. Norton & Company, 2001, ISBN   978-0-393-32205-7 ^{[9] [10]}
• Eliot's New Life. Oxford University Press, 1988 ^[11]
• Shared Lives. Norton, 1992. ISBN   978-0-393-03164-5 ^[12]
• Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life Chatto & Windus, 1994. ISBN   978-0-7011-6137-8; Little, Brown Book Group, 2009. ISBN   978-0-7481-1453-5 ^[13]
• A Private Life of Henry James: Two Women and His Art. Chatto & Windus, 1998. ISBN   978-0701161668. Also titled Henry James: His Women and His Art. Virago, 2012, ISBN   978-1-84408-892-8
• T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life . W.W. Norton & Company. 1999. ISBN   978-0-393-32093-0.
• Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. HarperCollins. 2005. ISBN   978-0-06-019802-2. 2006. ISBN   978-0-06-095774-2 ^{[14] [15]}
• Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds. Penguin. 2010. ISBN   978-0-670-02193-2.
• Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and a Daughter. London: Virago, 2014. ^{[16] [17]}
• Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World. London: Virago, 2017. ^{[18] [19]}
• "Dreams of a Mother and Daughter," in Dale Salwak, ed. Writers and Their Mothers. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. ISBN   978-3-319-68347-8 ^[20]
• The Hyacinth Girl: T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse. London: 2022.

Notes

1. "Gordon, Lyndall 1941-". Contemporary Authors. New Revision Series. 1 January 2007. Archived from the original on 28 March 2015 – via Highbeam.
2. Permanent Post Holders. "Gordon, Dr Lyndall | Faculty of English". English.ox.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 6 February 2014. Retrieved 5 February 2014.
3. "Lyndall Gordon".
4. "A bomb in her bosom: Emily Dickinson's secret life". The Guardian. 12 February 2010.
5. "Gordon, Lyndall". Royal Society of Literature. 1 September 2023. Retrieved 5 July 2025.
6. Gordon, Lyndall (1989). Eliot's early years. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-281252-0. OCLC   489896022.
7. "T.S. Eliot". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 27 May 2022.
8. Gordon, Lyndall (1977). Eliot's Early Years. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-812078-0.
9. Gordon, Lyndall (2006). Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life. Virago. ISBN   978-1-84408-142-4.
10. "Virginia Woolf". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 27 May 2022.
11. Gordon, Lyndall (1988). Eliot's New Life. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-811727-8.
12. Gordon, Lyndall (1994). Shared Lives. Vintage. ISBN   978-0-09-942461-1.
13. Gordon, Lyndall (1994). Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life. Chatto & Windus. ISBN   978-0-7011-6137-8.
14. Gordon, Lyndall (17 March 2009). Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. Harper Collins. ISBN   978-0-06-095774-2.
15. Gordon, Lyndall (2005). Vindication: a life of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN   0-06-019802-8. OCLC   57475923.
16. "Divided Lives review – Lyndall Gordon's struggle to cut the cord". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 May 2022.
17. Gordon, Lyndall (2015). Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and a Daughter. Little, Brown Book Group Limited. ISBN   978-1-84408-891-1.
18. Gordon, Lyndall (19 March 2019). Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World. JHU Press. ISBN   978-1-4214-2944-1.
19. "Outsiders by Lyndall Gordon review – five women writers who changed the world". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 May 2022.
20. Gordon, Lyndall (2014). Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and Daughter. Virago. ISBN   978-1-84408-890-4.

External links

• Lyndall Gordon's official site