In this episode, Sara Fitzgerald joins us to discuss her new book The Silenced Muse: Emily Hale, T.S. Eliot, and the Role of a Lifetime. It is the first book-length biography of Emily Hale, the longtime love and secret creative muse of poet T.S. Eliot, who wrote Emily Hale over 1100 letters over the decades of their complicated relationship. However, their relationship was mostly forgotten by history after their letters were locked away for 50 years after their deaths, to protect the innocent. By the time the archive was opened in January 2020, few scholars understood the depth of their relationship. This book reestablishes Hale, not only as a major influence on T.S. Eliot’s body of work, but also as her own woman. From Hale’s upbringing in Chestnut Hill to their first flirtation in a Harvard Square parlor, Fitzgerald traces the intertwining lives of Hale and Eliot over a half a century that revolves around the intellectual center of gravity that is Boston.
Tag: literature
Little Women in Boston (episode 171)
You don’t grow up to walk two steps behind your husband when you’ve met Jo March. The same could be said of Louisa May Alcott, in which case you may not take a husband at all, choosing instead to paddle your own canoe. It has been said that, with the penning of the semi-autobiographical novel Little Women, Alcott launched the notion of the of the All American Girl. With both Sewall and Quincy ancestry, a sharp mind coupled with a determination to succeed, and a life guided by progressive values, Alcott herself was certainly an All Boston Girl. Learn about Louisa May Alcott’s long journey to overnight success, and hear how Sirena Abalian portrays Jo in the Wheelock Family Theater’s production of Little Women, the Musical.