The Letters of T. S. Eliot


Book Description

In two highly anticipated volumes, the correspondence of the twentieth century's eminent man of letters, from youth to early manhood




The Letters of T. S. Eliot


Book Description

Volume One: 1898–1922 presents some 1,400 letters encompassing the years of Eliot's childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, through 1922, by which time the poet had settled in England, married his first wife, and published The Waste Land. Since the first publication of this volume in 1988, many new materials from British and American sources have come to light. More than two hundred of these newly discovered letters are now included, filling crucial gaps in the record and shedding new light on Eliot's activities in London during and after the First World War. Volume Two: 1923–1925 covers the early years of Eliot's editorship of The Criterion, publication of The Hollow Men, and his developing thought about poetry and poetics. The volume offers 1,400 letters, charting Eliot's journey toward conversion to the Anglican faith, as well as his transformation from banker to publisher and his appointment as director of the new publishing house Faber & Gwyer. The prolific and various correspondence in this volume testifies to Eliot's growing influence as cultural commentator and editor.




The Letters of T. S. Eliot Volume 4: 1928-1929


Book Description

Volume 4 of the letters of T. S. Eliot, which brings the poet, critic, editor and publisher into his forties, documents a period of anxious and fast-moving professional recovery and personal and spiritual consolidation. Following the withdrawal of financial support by his patron Lady Rothermere, Faber & Gwyer (subsequently Faber & Faber) eventually takes over the responsibility for Eliot's literary periodical The Criterion. He supplements his income as a fledgling publisher, 'just as I did ten years ago, by reviewing, articles, prefaces, lectures, broadcasting talks, and anything that turns up.' His work as editor is internationalist above all else, and Eliot makes contact with a number of eminent and emergent writers and thinkers, as well as forging links with European reviews ('all of which have endeavoured to keep the intellectual blood of Europe circulating throughout the whole of Europe'). Eliot's responsibilities during this period extend to caring for Vivien, who returns home after months in a French psychiatric hospital and whom he looks after with anxious fortitude; and the personal correspondence with his mother closes with her death in September 1929.




The Letters of T. S. Eliot Volume 1: 1898-1922


Book Description

Volume One of the Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot in 1988, covered the period from Eliot's childhood in St Louis, Missouri, to the end of 1922, by which time he had settled in England, married and published The Waste Land. Since 1988, Valerie Eliot has continued to gather materials from collections, libraries and private sources in Britain and America, towards the preparation of subsequent volumes of the Letters edition. Among new letters to have come to light, a good many date from the years 1898-1922, which has necessitated a revised edition of Volume One, taking account of approximately two hundred newly discovered items of correspondence. The new letters fill crucial gaps in the record, notably enlarging our understanding of the genesis and publication of The Waste Land. Valuable, too, are letters from the earlier and less documented part of Eliot's life, which have been supplemented by additional correspondence from family members in America.




The Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922


Book Description

This first volume of Eliot's correspondence covers his childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, through 1922, when he married and settled in England. The contents have been assembled by his widow, Valerie, from collections, libraries, and private sources worldwide. Published on the centenary of Eliot's birth.




T. S. Eliot


Book Description

Late in his life T. S. Eliot, when asked if his poetry belonged in the tradition of American literature, replied: “I’d say that my poetry has obviously more in common with my distinguished contemporaries in America than with anything written in my generation in England. That I’m sure of. . . . In its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America.” In T. S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet, James Miller offers the first sustained account of Eliot’s early years, showing that the emotional springs of his poetry did indeed come from America. Miller challenges long-held assumptions about Eliot’s poetry and his life. Eliot himself always maintained that his poems were not based on personal experience, and thus should not be read as personal poems. But Miller convincingly combines a reading of the early work with careful analysis of surviving early correspondence, accounts from Eliot’s friends and acquaintances, and new scholarship that delves into Eliot’s Harvard years. Ultimately, Miller demonstrates that Eliot’s poetry is filled with reflections of his personal experiences: his relationships with family, friends, and wives; his sexuality; his intellectual and social development; his influences. Publication of T. S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet marks a milestone in Eliot scholarship. At last we have a balanced portrait of the poet and the man, one that takes seriously his American roots. In the process, we gain a fuller appreciation for some of the best-loved poetry of the twentieth century.




The Poems of T. S. Eliot, Volume I


Book Description

The first volume of the first paperback edition of The Poems of T. S. Eliot This two-volume critical edition of T. S. Eliot’s poems establishes a new text of the Collected Poems 1909–1962, rectifying accidental omissions and errors that have crept in during the century since Eliot’s astonishing debut, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” In addition to the masterpieces, The Poems of T. S. Eliot contains the poems of Eliot’s youth, which were rediscovered only decades later; poems that circulated privately during his lifetime; and love poems from his final years, written for his wife, Valerie. Calling upon Eliot’s critical writings as well as his drafts, letters, and other original materials, Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue have provided a commentary that illuminates the imaginative life of each poem. This first volume respects Eliot’s decisions by opening with his Collected Poems 1909–1962 as he arranged and issued it shortly before his death. This is followed by poems uncollected but either written for or suitable for publication, and by a new reading text of the drafts of The Waste Land. The second volume opens with the two books of verse of other kinds that Eliot issued: Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and Anabasis, his translation of St.-John Perse’s Anabase. Each of these sections is accompanied by its own commentary. Finally, pertaining to the entire edition, there is a comprehensive textual history that contains not only variants from all known drafts and the many printings but also extended passages amounting to hundreds of lines of compelling verse.




In Sight of Chaos


Book Description




The Waste Land and Other Poems


Book Description

A collection of T.S. Eliot’s most important poems, including “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” T. S. Eliot is one of the most important and influential poets of the twentieth century. His unique and innovative evocations of the folly and poetry of humanity helped reshape modern literature, with poems such as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” included here, and most notable, the title poem, “The Waste Land,” his groundbreaking masterpiece of postwar decay and redemption. Since its publication in 1922, “The Waste Land” has become one of the most widely studied modernist texts in English literature. Gathering together many of Eliot's major early poems, distinguished Harvard scholar and literary critic Helen Vendler presents an invaluable portrait of T. S. Eliot as a young poet and examines the artistry and craft that made him a Nobel laureate and one of the most significant voices in modern verse.




Young Eliot


Book Description

Published simultaneously in Britain and America to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of T. S. Eliot, this major biography traces the life of the twentieth century’s most important poet from his childhood in the ragtime city of St Louis right up to the publication of his most famous poem, The Waste Land. Meticulously detailed and incisively written, Young Eliot portrays a brilliant, shy and wounded American who defied his parents’ wishes and committed himself to life as an immigrant in England, authoring work astonishing in its scope and hurt. Quoting extensively from poetry and prose as well as drawing on new interviews, archives, and previously undisclosed memoirs, Robert Crawford shows how Eliot’s background in Missouri, Massachusetts and Paris made him a lightning conductor for modernity. Most impressively, Young Eliot shows how deeply personal were the experiences underlying masterpieces from ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ to The Waste Land. T. S. Eliot wanted no biography written, but this book reveals him in all his vulnerable complexity as student and lover, stink-bomber, banker and philosopher, but most of all as an epoch-shaping poet struggling to make art among personal disasters.