The Silenced Muse

The first full-length biography of the longtime secret love of the celebrated poet T. S. Eliot, Emily Hale, called "heartbreaking" by Publishers Weekly. In January 2020, the largest and most eagerly awaited cache of new materials written by the Nobel-Prize-winning poet T. S. Eliot was finally opened: 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