Sara Fitzgerald

The first full-length biography of Emily Hale, the longtime secret love of the celebrated poet T. S. Eliot. In January 2020, the T. S. Eliot estate finally published the largest and most eagerly awaited cache of new materials written by the Nobel-Prize-winning poet: the 1,131 letters he sent Emily Hale, his little-known American love. But even as Eliot scholars explore Hale’s impact on Eliot’s work, a tantalizing question has not been fully answered: who was Emily Hale?Sara Fitzgerald’s The Silenced Muse: Emily Hale, T. S. Eliot, and the Role of a Lifetime is the first full-length biography devoted to Hale, telling her side of a complicated relationship. Based on the embargoed letters and Fitzgerald’s extensive research into Hale’s life and times, this book brings to light that Hale was much more than just a muse to a literary celebrity. Hale overcame personal hardship to pursue a career as a professor of speech and drama at prominent American women’s colleges and schools. She was a talented amateur actress and director, sharing the stage with others who went on to notable professional careers. Behind the scenes, she also guided Eliot as he began to explore playwriting with works such as Murder in the Cathedral. Hale’s story is challenging to wholly uncover because the Boston clergyman’s daughter was by nature reticent and humble. More critically, Eliot arranged for nearly all of her letters to be destroyed. The Silenced Muse finally reveals that Hale’s story is not that of a lover scorned, but rather a woman who was herself gifted and celebrated by her students and peers, entirely distinct from Eliot.

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.

In 1970, a group of women in Ann Arbor launched a crusade with an objective that seemed beyond reach at the time—force the University of Michigan to treat women the same as men. Sex discrimination was then rampant at U-M. The school’s admissions officials sought to maintain a ratio of 55:45 between male and female undergraduate entrants, turning away more qualified female applicants and arguing, among other things, that men needed help because they were less mature and posted lower grades. Women comprised less than seven percent of the University’s faculty members and their salaries trailed their male peers by substantial amounts. As one administrator put it when pressed about the disparity, “Men have better use for the extra money.” Galvanized by their shared experiences with sex discrimination, the Ann Arbor women organized a group called FOCUS on Equal Employment for Women, led by activist Jean Ledwith King. Working with Bernice Sandler of the Women’s Equity Action League, they developed a strategy to unleash the power of another powerful institution—the federal government—to demand change at U-M and, they hoped, across the world of higher education. Prompted by a complaint filed by FOCUS, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare soon documented egregious examples of discrimination in Michigan’s practices toward women and threatened to withhold millions of dollars in contracts unless the school adopted remedies. Among the hundreds of similar complaints filed against U.S. colleges in 1970–1971, the one brought by the Michigan women achieved the breakthrough that provided the historic template for settlements with other institutions. Drawing on oral histories from archives as well as new interviews with living participants, Conquering Heroines chronicles this pivotal period in the histories of the University of Michigan and the women’s movement. An incredible story of grassroots activism and courageous women, the book highlights the kind of relentless effort that has helped make inclusivity an ongoing goal at U-M.

"A magisterially written, well-researched, informative, and entertaining biography of a woman who helped throw open the doors to broader participation and power for women in the Republican Party and American politics."---Dave Dempsey, author of William G. Milliken: Michigan's Passionate Moderate"Elly Peterson will be a text to which historians and researchers turn for insight into the yin and yang of mainstream politics in the mid-century."---Patricia Sullivan, past president, Journalism and Women Symposium"This lively portrait of a leading woman in the Republican Party between 1952 and 1982 also charts the party's shift to the right after 1964, revealingly viewed through the eyes of liberal Republican women. Intensively researched with ethnographic attention to the subtleties of political culture, Fitzgerald's book is essential reading for anyone interested in how the Republican Party changed during the turbulent decades after 1960 and how women and women's issues shaped those changes."---Kathryn Kish Sklar, Distinguished Professor of History, State University of New York, Binghamton"Sara Fitzgerald tells Peterson's story in this superb and timely biography. It carries a message that deserves the widest audience as the nation struggles to find needed consensus on critical issues amid poisonous political partisanship that has made it increasingly difficult for public officials to bridge their differences. I hope that every American reads it."---Pulitzer Prize winner Haynes Johnson, from the Foreword"To understand the quest for equal rights in America you really need to meet those women who were active at the time of transition. In this gripping biography we meet one woman who entered a male dominated world and triumphed."---Francis X. Blouin Jr., Director, Bentley Historical Library"Sara Fitzgerald's writing is as intelligent as it is entertaining."---Best-selling novelist Diane Chamberlain Elly Peterson was one of the highest ranking women in the Republican Party. In 1964 she ran for a Michigan seat in the U.S. Senate and became the first woman to serve as chair of the Michigan Republican Party. During the 1960s she grew disenchanted with the increasing conservatism of her party, united with other feminists to push for the Equal Rights Amendment and reproductive choice, battled Phyllis Schlafly to prevent her from gaining control of the National Federation of Republican Women, and became an independent.Elly Peterson's story is a missing chapter in the political history of Michigan, as well as the United States. This new biography, written by Sara Fitzgerald (a Michigan native and former Washington Post editor), finally gives full credit to one of the first female political leaders in this country.When Peterson resigned in 1970 as assistant chairman of the Republican National Committee, David Broder of the Washington Post wrote that "her abilities would have earned her the national chairmanship, were it not for the unwritten sex barrier both parties have erected around that job."