For all his professed disdain of such activities, Auden was an

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION
I make comments in blue typeface.
The clarity of official explanations varies. This OE is a little confusing.

• Choice A is the best answer and is idiomatically phrased
Why? Is "disdain of" idiomatic? Or "For all"?

• Choice B fails to express the sense that Auden indulged in literary gossip [that Auden participated in literary gossip, that Auden DID gossip]
despite [his] professing disdain for it.
Why does B fail to express this sense? See my analysis below.

• Choices C, D, and E do not establish precisely that Auden was the one professing disdain for literary gossip.
[Okay, so if "disdain of" is idiomatic, why does this author use "disdain for"?]

• The and in C makes the disembodied professions of disdain and the indulgence in gossip seem like wholly separate matters
How does this writer glean from the actual words in answer C that "such activities" are "professions of disdain"?

•E is especially awkward
Why? More awkward than C? Which is more awkward, a sentence that makes no sense, or a sentence
that uses a lot of words but makes sense?

COMMENTS

First, NCRanjan , a belated welcome to GMAT Club!

Second, this question is hard.
If you have been reading newspapers and journals, ahem,
then you will have seen disdain for much more often than disdain of.
That pattern was true when this question was written.

So this question forces you to choose between what most people believe is idiomatic,
and meaning.

Always choose meaning.

This question is similar to a very good MGMAT question about acai berries, here.
That question, in turn, was based on an official question about Elizabeth Barrett Browning. (linked in the post)

In the correct answer to the Browning question, GMAC violated what people thought was a well-established pronoun rule sometimes called "possessive poison."

Choosing the option closest to logical meaning in both the Browning and acai berry questions is only way to get the correct answer.

We have a similar issue.
We must choose the most logical meaning even though disdain of seems weird.

I have seen "disdain of" about ten times.
I have seen "disdain for" hundreds of times.
I have seen disdain without any preposition hundreds of times.
(Because she disdained insincerity, she noticed that her colleague's actions contradicted his seemingly humble words.)
-- disdain of is not wrong, but it is rare

We must ignore what we know about idioms in favor of meaning.

I ask people to write the meaning of the sentence in their own words because 40 percent of SC
questions turn on meaning ("logical predication").
This question cannot be answered correctly without a solid understanding that the sentence
intends to convey a contradiction (contrast, irony).

Meaning?
Prateekj05 wrote:
"[D]espite Auden's contempt for gossip, he himself was a habitual literary gossiper."
Excellent.
Arro44 (Chris) wrote:
"Although Auden always professed disdain for such activities, he was an inveterate literary gossip nonetheless."
Excellent.
Both authors are wisely stubborn about meaning.

Here is meaning in the plainest English I can muster:
Although Auden often announced that he did not like gossiping, he gossiped constantly. He was a hypocrite.

Now, the options.

• Option A
uses "for" in the sense of "despite," as Prateekj05 notes. (Thanks for attaching the download! Very thoughtful. ).

For all his professed disdain of such activities, Auden was an inveterate literary gossip.
Option A means: despite having spoken disdainfully about literary gossip, Auden himself was an incurable literary gossip.
Bingo.

• Option B
Having always professed disdain for such activities, Auden was an inveterate literary gossip.

If we had not seen option A, we would read this sentence in (B) and think, "Huh?" Watch:
Having announced frequently that he despised the color olive green, he wore an olive green tie every day.

After we read the first part of that sentence, we expect something such as "he absolutely refused to wear olive green-colored ties."

But we get the opposite. He wears an olive-green tie every day!
In order to make sense, that sentence would need to state:
Having announced frequently that he despised the color olive green, nonetheless he wore an olive green tie every day.

Our option (B) does not have a contrast word such as "nonetheless" or "hypocritically" in the non-underlined portion of the sentence.

As such, we have no idea in B what meaning is intended.

"Having always" sets us up to expect that Auden was not a gossip.
So which of the two parts of option B's sentence is accurate? We don't know.

This option is not logical.
GMAC hopes we will mentally insert a contrast word into this option, in part because we have read (A).
Illogically connected sentences do not convey contradiction in a way that makes sense.
They convey confusion. Option B at best is confusing.

• Option C says
All such activities were, he professed, disdained, and Auden was an inveterate literary gossip.

The author of the OE assumes that "such activities" refers to "professions of disdain" for "literary gossip,"
but this sentence says no such thing.

Option C, rewritten: Auden professed that he disdained "all such activities," and Auden was an inveterate literary gossip.
This horribly constructed sentence does not convey intended meaning; "such activities" could be anything, and there is no contrast word
to establish a clear linkage to Auden's hypocrisy.

• Option D,
while not horribly constructed, has the same errors as C. "Such activities" could be anything, and there is no contrast word.

• Option E
is poorly constructed, and it, too, does not have a word that signals contradiction.
"Such activities," as in (C), could be anything.

Option A is correct.

dave13 stepped in to help, as I have see some of you begin to do ( ), and provided a much-needed laugh (thank you!).

Prateekj05 wrote the best answer.
He and Arro44 rightly chose to insist that meaning must be clear and as intended.

That decision is not an easy one to make.
Takeaway: if only one option clearly conveys logical meaning,
even if that option seems weird or odd, choose that one.

I appreciate all the posters. This question is hard.