Lyndall Gordon (born 4 November 1941) is a British-based biographical and former academic writer, known for her literary biographies. She is a senior research fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford. Life Born in Cape Town, she had her undergraduate studies at the University of Cape Town and her doctorate at Columbia University in New York City. She is married to pathologist, Siamon Gordon; they have two daughters. Gordon is the author of Eliot's Early Years (1977), which won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize; Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life (1984), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life (1994), winner of the Cheltenham Prize for Literature; and Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, shortlisted for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize. Her most recent publications are Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her Family's Feuds (2010), which has challenged the established assumptions about the poet's life; Shared Lives: Growing Up in 50s Cape Town (D. Philip Publishers, 1992); Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and a Daughter (London: Virago, 2014); and Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World (London: Virago, 2017). Gordon’s most recent work is The Hyacinth Girl: T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse (2023). Works Eliot's Early Years. Oxford University Press, 1977. ; W. W. Norton & Company, 2001, Eliot's New Life. Oxford University Press, 1988 Shared Lives. Norton, 1992. Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life Chatto & Windus, 1994. ; Little, Brown Book Group, 2009. A Private Life of Henry James: Two Women and His Art. Chatto & Windus, 1998. . Also titled Henry James: His Women and His Art. Virago, 2012, 2006. Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and a Daughter. London: Virago, 2014. Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World. London: Virago, 2017. "Dreams of a Mother and Daughter," in Dale Salwak, ed. Writers and Their Mothers. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. The Hyacinth Girl: T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse. London: 2022. Notes External links Lyndall Gordon's official site Living people South African biographers Women biographers English biographers University of Cape Town alumni Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Writers from Cape Town Columbia University alumni James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients 1941 births 20th-century South African women writers 20th-century biographers 21st-century South African women writers 21st-century biographers Mary Wollstonecraft scholars