这个由Peter Adam——在格雷（Gray）晚年隐居的那几年与她有密切来往的少数人之一——撰写的传记的最完整可靠的新版非常详尽地概述了她的生平和作品。通过格雷个人档案中的资料——书信，日记，照片和建筑速写本对这本书进行了全面的更新和说明，它讲述了她完整的人生故事，从爱尔兰的贵族起源，到装饰艺术时代的巴黎的奢华，与恋人、男性与女性的关系，以及她在法国南部的多产年代。它揭示了她优雅而大部分被忽视的绘画的新鲜细节；与勒•柯布西耶（Le Corbusier）的紧张交流；和由她自己设计和布置，为彻底的现代主义生活树立了新的标准的房屋E.1027的命运。

One of the most important designers and architects of the 20th century, Eileen Gray (1878–1976) wielded enormous influence – though often unacknowledged, especially in her lifetime – in a field largely dominated by men. Today, her original furniture sells for dizzying sums and her iconic designs, including the luxurious Bibendum chair and the refined yet functional E.1027 table, are renowned throughout the world.

Resolutely independent and frequently underappreciated, Gray evolved from a creator of opulent lacquer furniture into a pioneer of the modernist principle of form following function. Remaining separate from major schools or movements such as Bauhaus and De Stijl, she developed her own distinctive take on the forms and materials favoured by fellow International Style designers such as Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand and Mies van der Rohe.

This definitive new edition of the biography by Peter Adam, one of the few people close to Gray during her reclusive later years, is a uniquely intimate survey of her life and work. Comprehensively updated and illustrated with material drawn from Gray’s personal archives – correspondence, journals, photographs and architectural sketchbooks – it tells the full story of her life from aristocratic beginnings in Ireland, through the extravagance of Art Deco-era Paris, relationships with lovers, male and female, and her productive years in southern France. It reveals fresh details about her elegant, largely overlooked paintings; tense exchanges with Le Corbusier; and the fate of E.1027, the home that she designed and furnished herself, and which set a new standard for radically modernist living.