Lyndall Gordon (born 4 November 1941)^[1] is a British-based biographical and former academic writer, known for herliterary biographies. She is a senior research fellow atSt Hilda's College, Oxford.^[2]

Born in Cape Town, she had her undergraduate studies at theUniversity of Cape Town and her doctorate atColumbia University in New York City. She is married to pathologist,Siamon Gordon; they have two daughters.^{[citation needed]}

Gordon is the author ofEliot's Early Years (1977), which won theBritish Academy'sRose Mary Crawshay Prize;^[3]Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life (1984), which won theJames Tait Black Memorial Prize;Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life (1994), winner of theCheltenham Prize for Literature; andVindication: A Life ofMary Wollstonecraft, shortlisted for theBBC FourSamuel Johnson Prize. Her most recent publications areLives Like Loaded Guns:Emily Dickinson and her Family's Feuds (2010), which has challenged established assumptions about the poet's life;^[4]Shared Lives: Growing Up in 50s Cape Town (D. Philip Publishers, 1992);Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and a Daughter (London: Virago, 2014); andOutsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World (London: Virago, 2017).

She was elected aFellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002.^[5]

Gordon's most recent work isThe Hyacinth Girl: T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse (2022).^{[citation needed]}

• Eliot's Early Years.Oxford University Press, 1977.ISBN 978-0-19-812078-0^[6][7][8]
• Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life. Oxford University Press. 1984.ISBN 978-0-19-811723-0.; W. W. Norton & Company, 2001,ISBN 978-0-393-32205-7^[9][10]
• Eliot's New Life. Oxford University Press, 1988^[11]
• Shared Lives. Norton, 1992.ISBN 978-0-393-03164-5^[12]
• Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life Chatto & Windus, 1994.ISBN 978-0-7011-6137-8; Little, Brown Book Group, 2009.ISBN 978-0-7481-1453-5^[13]
• A Private Life ofHenry James: Two Women and His Art. Chatto & Windus, 1998.ISBN 978-0701161668. Also titledHenry James: His Women and His Art. Virago, 2012,ISBN 978-1-84408-892-8
• T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life. W.W. Norton & Company. 1999.ISBN 978-0-393-32093-0.
• Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. HarperCollins. 2005.ISBN 978-0-06-019802-2. 2006.ISBN 978-0-06-095774-2^[14][15]
• Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds. Penguin. 2010.ISBN 978-0-670-02193-2.
• Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and a Daughter. London: Virago, 2014.^[16][17]
• Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World. London: Virago, 2017.^[18][19]
• "Dreams of a Mother and Daughter," inDale Salwak, ed.Writers and Their Mothers. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.ISBN 978-3-319-68347-8^[20]
• The Hyacinth Girl:T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse. London: 2022.

• Lyndall Gordon's official site

• Living people
• South African biographers
• South African women biographers
• British 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 British biographers
• 21st-century South African women writers
• 21st-century British biographers
• Mary Wollstonecraft scholars

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from April 2022
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from May 2022
• Articles with unsourced statements from August 2023