Lyndall Gordon is the prize-winning author of six biographies,including Lives Like Loaded Guns:Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds and The Imperfect Life of TS Eliot, and also Shared Lives, a memoir of women's friendship in her native South Africa. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and lives in Oxford where she is a fellow of St Hilda's College.
Gordon is a natural storyteller, and the lives stir us and fascinate us no matter how well we already know them . . . full of novelistic insight, pushing into the biographical material to substantiate her hunches, tracing patterns and repetitions in these writers' emotional lives and in their work -- Tessa Hadley * Guardian * Gordon succeeds in showing not only the pain but the possibilities of the outsider . While distinctive in their voices, these writers converge in their hatred of our violent world , exposing domestic and systemic violence. Their strength of spirit shines from the pages and through the ages -- Anita Sethi * Observer * Impeccably researched . . . an excellent read * The Lady * Lyndall Gordon's empathetic commitment to the unfolding story in the lives of literary figures is central to her work * Daily Telegraph * The work and lives of Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Mary Shelley, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf are well known. Gordon's thesis sets out just how original and brave they were - and at what cost. We owe them much -- Joan Bakewell * New Statesman * In subtle and elegant interpretations, Gordon allows us to see their novels 'afresh'. The pattern she traces in their writing is equally striking: each woman refused, as Gordon puts it, 'to make terms with our violent world', and this is what makes their voices so modern . . . She is a biographer of the imagination as opposed to a recorder of historical facts. -- Frances Wilson * Mail on Sunday * Thought-provoking . . . enticing -- Erica Wagner * New Statesman * Gordon's book is a pertinent reminder of the risks each of them bravely faced in order to save themselves from the fate of a Maggie Tulliver or a Judith Shakespeare and leave posterity with their remarkable works * Literary Review * Gordon rallies the reader to look to these five as the trailblazers and inspiration for our own lives. * Emerald Street * Gordon is a natural storyteller, and the lives stir us and fascinate us no matter how well we already know them . . . full of novelistic insight, pushing into the biographical material to substantiate her hunches, tracing patterns and repetitions in these writers' emotional lives and in their work * Guardian * Gordon succeeds in showing not only the pain but the possibilities of the outsider . While distinctive in their voices, these writers converge in their hatred of our violent world , exposing domestic and systemic violence. Their strength of spirit shines from the pages and through the ages * Observer * Impeccably researched . . . an excellent read * The Lady * Lyndall Gordon's empathetic commitment to the unfolding story in the lives of literary figures is central to her work * Daily Telegraph * The work and lives of Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Mary Shelley, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf are well known. Gordon's thesis sets out just how original and brave they were - and at what cost. We owe them much * New Statesman * In subtle and elegant interpretations, Gordon allows us to see their novels 'afresh'. The pattern she traces in their writing is equally striking: each woman refused, as Gordon puts it, 'to make terms with our violent world', and this is what makes their voices so modern . . . She is a biographer of the imagination as opposed to a recorder of historical facts. * Mail on Sunday * Thought-provoking . . . enticing * New Statesman * Gordon's book is a pertinent reminder of the risks each of them bravely faced in order to save themselves from the fate of a Maggie Tulliver or a Judith Shakespeare and leave posterity with their remarkable works * Literary Review *