Description

Eliot scholar Sara Fitzgerald discusses the relationship between T.S. Eliot and Emily Hale. The poet’s shift to playwriting was inspired—and guided—by Emily Hale, a talented amateur actress and speech and drama teacher from Boston who was Eliot’s longtime secret love. Those details emerge from the more than 1,100 letters Eliot wrote Hale over their lifetimes, a correspondence that was finally opened in 2020. Fitzgerald’s biography of Hale, The Silenced Muse: Emily Hale, T. S. Eliot, and the Role of a Lifetime, was selected by The Washington Post as one of its 50 Notable Non-fiction Books of 2024. Books will be available for purchase. Sponsored by the Gloucester Writers Center.