By the time Vivienne Eliot was committed to an asylum for what
would be the final nine years of her life, she had been abandoned
by her husband T.S. Eliot and shunned by literary London. Yet
Vivienne was neither insane nor insignificant. She generously
collaborated in her husband’s literary efforts, taking dictation,
editing his drafts, and writing articles for his magazine,
Criterion. Her distinctive voice can be heard in his poetry. And
paradoxically, it was the unhappiness of the Eliots’ marriage that
inspired some of the poet’s most distinguished work, from The
Family Reunion to The Waste Land. This first biography ever written
about Vivienne draws on hundreds of previously unpublished papers,
journals and letters to portray a spontaneous, loving, but fragile
woman who had an important influence on her husband’s work, as well
as a great poet whose behavior was hampered by psychological and
sexual impulses he could not fully acknowledge.
Intriguing and provocative, Painted Shadow gracefully rescues
Vivienne Eliot from undeserved obscurity, and is indispensable for
anyone wishing to understand T.S. Eliot, Vivienne, or the world in
which they traveled.