The first full-length biography of Emily Hale, the longtime secret love of the celebrated poet T. S. Eliot. In January 2020, the T. S. Eliot estate finally opened the largest and most eagerly awaited cache of new materials written by the Nobel-Prize-winning poet: the 1,131 letters he sent Emily Hale, his little-known American love. But even as Eliot scholars explore Hale's impact on Eliot's work, a tantalizing question has not been fully answered: who was Emily Hale? Sara Fitzgerald's The Silenced Muse: Emily Hale, T. S. Eliot, and the Role of a Lifetime is the first full-length biography devoted to Hale, telling her side of a complicated relationship. Based on the embargoed letters and Fitzgerald's extensive research into Hale's life and times, this book brings to light that Hale was much more than just a muse to a literary celebrity. Hale overcame personal hardship to pursue a career as a professor of speech and drama at prominent American women's colleges and schools. She was a talented amateur actress and director, sharing the stage with others who went on to notable professional careers. Behind the scenes, she also guided Eliot as he began to explore playwriting with works such as Murder in the Cathedral. Hale's story is challenging to wholly uncover because the Boston clergyman's daughter was by nature reticent and humble. More critically, Eliot arranged for nearly all of her letters to be destroyed. The Silenced Muse finally reveals that Hale's story is not that of a lover scorned, but rather a woman who was herself gifted and celebrated by her students and peers.
Sara Fitzgerald is a retired journalist whose career included fifteen years as an editor and new media developer for the Washington Post. She is the author of the biography Elly Peterson: "Mother" of the Moderates, recognized as a Notable Book of 2012 by the Library of Michigan as well as by the Historical Society of Michigan. In 2020, she published Conquering Heroines: How Women Fought Sex Bias at Michigan and Paved the Way for Title IX and The Poet's Girl: A Novel of Emily Hale and T. S. Eliot. Fitzgerald's essays about Hale have appeared in the Journal of the T. S. Eliot Society;the T. S. Eliot Studies Annual; Time Present, the newsletter of the International T. S. Eliot Society; and Exchanges, the newsletter of the T. S. Eliot Society (UK). She lives in the Washington, DC, area. Learn more at www.sarafitzgerald.com.
The Silenced Muse sizzles with the tension of love's complications. That the emotionally tumultuous relationship involves the celebrated poet T. S. Eliot and his lifelong friend and confidante Emily Hale makes this compelling book a must-read. Fired by a reporter's zeal to uncover the full story, Sara Fitzgerald has given us the first-ever biography of the long-obscure woman who inspired some of Eliot's most memorable writings, only to discover he wasn't always a man of his words. --Diana Parsell, author of Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington's Cherry Trees Although Eliot famously tried to erase his long attachment to his muse as "the love of a ghost for a ghost," The Silenced Muse gives Emily Hale the substance she carried throughout her life. Fitzgerald's meticulous research and abundant, accurate notes bring to light a full record of her performances on stage and her successes as a director of plays. The book's apt subtitle, The Role of a Lifetime, and the stress on drama shows Hale as her own woman with a fulfilling vocation for theatre and teaching. For Hale showed heartfelt generosity not only in private to a great poet, but to a myriad of obscure pupils whose latent gifts she elicited. The wealth of facts about this lively woman prompt further debate about the nature of the Eliot-Hale relationship. --Lyndall Gordon, author of The Hyacinth Girl: T. S. Eliot's Hidden Muse Drawing extensively on T. S. Eliot's private correspondence and on newspaper archives on three continents, Sara Fitzgerald presents the first biography devoted exclusively to Emily Hale, the American actress and teacher who was throughout four decades the love of the poet's life. The Silenced Muse tells Hale's story with single-minded dedication and contains material available in no other book. --Robert Crawford, author of Eliot After "The Waste Land" and Young Eliot Sara Fitzgerald's The Silenced Muse gives voice to the complex push and pull in T.S. Eliot and Emily Hale's on-again, off-again relationship. Impeccably researched and dramatically written, Fitzgerald's book illuminates the life of a woman whom history--and archival strictures--have kept in the shadows. Fortunately for us, Fitzgerald has changed this. --Julie Dobrow, author of After Emily: Two Remarkable Women and the Legacy of America's Greatest Poet Captivated by the relationship between T.S. Eliot and his long-lost American love Emily Hale, author Sara Fitzgerald initially wrote a well-reviewed novel about the romance. Now she has written the definitive biography of Hale, an actress and educator. It is well-researched and riveting. --Meryl Gordon, bestselling author of The Woman Who Knew Everyone: The Power of Perle Mesta Actor and educator Emily Hale takes her rightful place center stage in this sensitive biography of the woman who served as the poet T.S. Eliot's muse. Sara Fitzgerald's deep research reveals Hale's intelligence, independent spirit, and great capacity for love and loyalty, and she renders Hale's successes and heartbreaks with visceral clarity. It's a satisfying story of a complex woman that readers won't soon forget. --Theresa Kaminski, author of Queen of the West: The Life and Times of Dale Evans Emily Hale in her own right at last, emerging from behind the mirrors of Eliot-focused scholarship and the poet's own letters, in this thoroughly researched biography. --Paul Keers, Chair of the T.S. Eliot Society (UK)
