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"Writing Great Tom is the account of a biographer's journey that began with a letter from a New York editor asking him to write a biography of T. S. Eliot. T. S. Matthews referred to the journey as ""living a detective story."" He began keeping this backup account when he thought it might be impossible to write the biography. He comforted himself with the idea of publishing instead ""The Story of a Book."" This story is composed of reflections, interview notes, dozens of letters to and from people including Robert Lowell, Edmund Wilson, and Valerie (Mrs. T. S.) Eliot, and correspondence with libraries and lawyers. Matthews's extensive contacts on both sides of the Atlantic enabled him to interview a wide range of people important in Eliot's life. He was the first to explore the role of two women important in Eliot's life and evident in his poetry: his first wife, Vivien Haigh-Wood and his confidante of many decades, Emily Hale. Fortunately, and in spite of what he called the ""Eliot Establishment,"" Matthews managed to complete the first biography of T. S. Eliot It was published in the US and the UK as Great Tom: Notes Towards the Definition of T. S. Eliot. Matthews's backup account was filed away at Princeton University as part of the archives from his extensive writing career. The folder was discovered by Sara Fitzgerald in 2021, just over a year after Princeton opened the collection of more than 1,100 long-sequestered letters from T. S. Eliot to Emily Hale. More than fifty years on, his unfinished draft provides a lively, personal perspective on the challenges of contemporary biography."

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9781614720607

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"T. S. (Thomas Stanley) Matthews (1901-1991) was an American writer and editor who divided his time between the United States and England for many years. His early career as a journalist culminated with a period as editor of TIME magazine. After leaving TIME in 1953, he published a number of books, and was recruited to write the first major biography of T. S. Eliot, Great Tom: Notes Towards the Definition of T. S. Eliot, published by Harper & Row in 1973. He was a wealthy and well-connected man with friends on both sides of the Atlantic. He was able to make use of those connections when he undertook the difficult task of writing about Eliot. In an unusual reversal, he was also known later in life as one of the ex-husbands of American writer Martha Gellhorn, who was herself annoyed to be referred to as the ex-wife of Ernest Hemingway. Sara Fitzgerald's biography of Emily Hale will be published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2024. She is the author of The Poet's Girl: A Novel of Emily Hale and T. S. Eliot. Her essays about Hale's life have appeared in Volumes 3,4 and 5 of The T. S. Eliot Studies Annual, the 2020, 2022 and 2023 editions of the Journal of the T. S. Eliot Society (UK), and Time Present and Exchanges, the newsletters of the International T. S. Eliot Society and the British society, respectively. She has also presented papers on Hale and Eliot at conferences of the International T. S. Eliot Society, the South Atlantic Modern Language Association and the Midwest Modern Language Association. She is also the author of Conquering Heroines: How Women Fought Sex Bias at Michigan and Paved the Way for Title IX and Elly Peterson: ""Mother"" of the Moderates, both published by University of Michigan Press. She retired after a career in journalism that included fifteen years as an editor and new media developer for the Washington Post."

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