Biographical writing about Eliot is in a more confused and contested state than is the case with any other major twentieth-century writer. No major biography has been released since the publication of his early poems, Inventions of the March Hare, in 1996, which radically altered the reading public's perception of Eliot. There have been attempts to turn the American woman Emily Hale into the beloved woman of Eliot's middle years; and Eliot has also been blamed for the instability of his first wife and declared a closet homosexual. This biography frees Eliot from such distortions, as well as...

This collection of short pieces (mostly unpublished, mostly lectures) represents work done between 1994 and 2008 by John Worthen, now Emeritus Professor at the University of Nottingham and its Professor of D. H. Lawrence Studies, 1994-2003. They range between his research into the manuscript of D. H. Lawrence's story New Eve and Old Adam in Tulsa, to his farewell lecture (Ways of Saying Goodbye) at the University of Nottingham. Brief introductions recall the original occasions when the pieces were written or given as lectures; they recall John Worthen's underlying interest in the biographical...