- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: Robinson Publishing; New edition edition (12 Sep 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1841196363
- ISBN-13: 978-1841196367
- Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 13 x 4.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 598,002 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
In Painted Shadow, the first major biography of Vivienne 'wife of TS' Eliot, Carole Seymour-Jones succeeds where five previous biographers had allegedly failed, and in the process further reclaims the tattered reputation of the poet's tragic collaborative muse. Variously diagnosed with "moral insanity", anorexia and hysteria, Vivienne suffered from severe menstrual symptoms most of her life, as well as an inherited tendency for manic depression. Having collided in their desperation to escape their mothers, she and Tom married in 1915, to their families' disapproval and Tom's quickly encroaching disgust (newly married, he slept in a deckchair in the hall). He was revolted by the female form, and his wife's in particular, but during their 18 years together she was to inspire, and, on occasions, shape, his finest poetry; without her, "in all probability", The Waste Land would not have been written. Seymour-Jo! nes insists on a confessional, intimate reading of this landmark work, focusing on the influence of Jean Verdenal, the young French medic killed in the First World War, and whom Eliot idolised, and, in truth, idealised. Vivienne herself pursued a complicated menage à trois with Bertrand Russell, but she was as transparent as Tom was opaque, and when the cracks in their marriage became chasms he finally left her. After calling herself Daisy Miller she dabbled in music and fascism before finally being committed to a North London asylum in 1938, partly to prevent her besmirching Tom's reputation. She died there nine years later. Ultimately, her malady was less that she had gone out of her mind, than that she had gone out of her husband's.
With apposite and rich quotation, Seymour-Jones' prose glides effortlessly through the mire of early 20th-century London literary society, and in and out of the Eliots' tangled lives and marriage, bringing together valuable archive materials, subtle reading of the poetry, and sensitive consideration to produce a compulsive biography of considerable appeal and art. If ultimately Tom upstages the increasingly spectre-like Vivienne with his alcoholic rages, sadistic impulses, and sheer ferocious talent, Seymour-Jones unfurls a 'behind-every-great-man' life that proves as harrowing as it was doomed, and rescues the much-maligned Vivienne Eliot from the attic of literary madwomen. --David Vincent --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
'A gripping 700-pager, immaculately researched, which at a stroke consigns all those academic books which have taken TSE's theory of the impersonal nature of his art to the rubbish heap' - Roger Lewis, Books of the Year, New Statesman; 'Fascinating and pitiful. [this] fine biography is the product of wide, meticulous research which exposes the nightmarish quality of the Eliot marriage' - Helen Dunmore, The Times; Brilliant, deeply researched, utterly compelling.' - Tom Paulin, Guardian
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This biography gripped me like a novel - I was spinning pages like mad! Cos if you're familiar with the Bloomsbury authors, this book reads like a whole lot of new gossip...
The picture which emerges is not very flattering though - and TS Eliot has a lot to answer for. Vivien is shown to be a tragic, flawed figure whose talent ran to waste partly because she was a woman (and thus denied the academic education enjoyed by her male counterparts) and partly because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is heartbreaking to see how vulnerable Vivien was: an emotional, over-ambitious, weak and naive woman in a world of cold, calculating men.
My only complaint about this book is the repetition I found - for instance, Seymour-Jones often quotes a letter or diary and then paraphrases the same words again in her text... And I don't know how necessary it was for her to tell us every time one of the Eliots had the flu or a cold.... This was pretty tedious and slowed down the narrative significantly.
I also felt the ending was a bit abrupt and over-ruled by Seymour's own evident emotion and feeling for her subject... Though by then we forgive Seymour because we feel so sorry for Vivien and angry with Eliot ourselves.
To be honest, it will be difficult to enjoy Eliot's poetry after reading this book .
Format:Hardcover
This book purports to be a life of Vivienne Eliot. Unfortunately, like all writers on Eliot, the author was impeded to some extent by the restrictions imposed by the Eliot estate. There is far more in this book about Vivienne's husband, her friends and her family than there is about her. She was a woman incapable of seeing reality and suffered as a consequence. No one comes out of this over-long book with any credit, except perhaps Ottoline Morrell, but the narrative is too weighted against T.S. Eliot to convince any dispassionate reader that he was the demon king here depicted. True, he was selfish, snobbish, acquisitive and manipulative and should never have married but he showed amazing forebearance before finally leaving Vivienne. Vivienne may not have been schizophrenic but she was definitely psychologically dysfunctional. There is room for a far more balanced account about this marriage than this but we are unlikely to see it soon.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This incredibly well researched book is a facinating read. By credibly demonstrating Vivienne's critical role in Eliot's early poetry, including the Waste Land, it adds to a much better understanding of these works. There is so much new and revealing detail about both Vivienne and Tom & their train wreck of a marriage that I would have thought it more useful than a biography of T.S. alone as a background to understanding his writing.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
What a disappointment!
This interminably long book,the research of a feminist who has jumped on the bandwagon of the 'Let's get T S Eliot' brigade is a complete waste of money. Read more
Published on 5 July 2005 by Christopher Casenove.
A sad tale superbly well-told.
This is a sad almost tragic account of how two people who should never have married lived together for many years torturing each other until finally one was abandoned into a mental... Read more
Published on 2 Jan 2002
Great for research but an incredibly boring read.
Painted Shadow reveals the life of Vivienne Haigh-Eliot, the forgotten first wife of the twentieth century poet, T S Eliot. Read more
Published on 3 Dec 2001 by Melissa Ramone
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