The founder of modern feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was the most famous woman of her era. A brilliant, unconventional rebel vilified for her strikingly modern notions of education, family, work, and personal relationships, she nevertheless strongly influenced political philosophy in Europe and a newborn America. Now acclaimed biographer Lyndall Gordon mounts a spirited defense of this courageous woman whose reputation has suffered over the years by painting a full and vibrant portrait of an extraordinary historical figure who was generations ahead of her time.
The founder of modern feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was the most famous woman of her era. A brilliant, unconventional rebel vilified fo...
The] contradictions in Bronte] s] life are not only fully chronicled by Lyndall Gordon s splendid new biography, but also gracefully explicated to give the reader a vivid and emotionally detailed portrait of the novelist and her work. . . . Gordon] chooses to use her imaginative sympathies honed to precision with earlier biographies of Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot to delineate her subject s rich interior life. Michiko Kakutani, New York Times"
The] contradictions in Bronte] s] life are not only fully chronicled by Lyndall Gordon s splendid new biography, but also gracefully explicated to g...
In this "nuanced, discerning account of a life famously flawed in its search for perfection" (The New Yorker), Gordon captures Eliot's "complex spiritual and artistic history . . . with tact, diligence, and subtlety" (Boston Globe). Drawing on recently discovered letters, she addresses in full the issue of Eliot's anti-Semitism as well as the less-noted issue of his misogyny. Her account "rescues both the poet and the man from the simplifying abstractions that have always been applied to him" (The New York Times), and is "definitive but not dogmatic, sympathetic without taking sides. . . ....
In this "nuanced, discerning account of a life famously flawed in its search for perfection" (The New Yorker), Gordon captures Eliot's "complex spi...
" M]easured, and brave in its imaginative interpretations." Carolyn Heilbrun, The New York Times Book Review This "original, intuitive, and even exciting" (The New Yorker) portrait highlights the experiences that shaped Virginia Woolf's life and art her childhood, her relationships with her father and sister, her marriage, and her descents into madness."
" M]easured, and brave in its imaginative interpretations." Carolyn Heilbrun, The New York Times Book Review This "original, intuitive, and even excit...