Thomas Stearns Eliot,
OMThe Order of Merit
is an order recognizing distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture...
(26 September 1888–4 January 1965), was a
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
,
playwrightA playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works are usually written to be performed in front of a live audience by actors...
, and literary critic. He received the
Nobel Prize in LiteratureThe Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
in 1948. Among his most famous writings are
The Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, commonly known as Prufrock, is a poem by the American poet, T.S Eliot, begun in February 1910 and published in Chicago in June 1915. Described as a "drama of literary anguish," it presents a stream of consciousness in the form of a dramatic monologue, and marked...
,
The Waste LandThe Waste Land[A] is a 434 line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922...
, "
The Hollow MenThe Hollow Men is a major poem by TS Eliot, the Nobel-Prize-winning modernist poet. Its themes are, like many of Eliot's poems, overlapping a fragmentary, but it is recognised to be concerned most with post-War Europe under the Treaty of Versailles , the difficulty of hope and religious...
",
Ash Wednesday"Ash Wednesday" is the first long poem written by T. S. Eliot after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism. Published in 1930 , this poem deals with the struggle that ensues when one who has lacked faith in the past strives to move towards God.Sometimes referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem",...
,
Four QuartetsFour Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published individually over a six-year period. The first poem, "Burnt Norton", was written and published with a collection of his early works following the production of Eliot's play, Murder in the Cathedral...
,
Murder in the CathedralMurder in the Cathedral is a poetic drama by T. S. Eliot that portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, first performed in 1935...
,
The Cocktail PartyThe Cocktail Party is a play by T. S. Eliot. Elements of the play are based on Alcestis, by the Ancient Greek playwright Euripides. The play was the most popular of Eliot's seven plays in his lifetime, although his 1935 play, Murder in the Cathedral, is better remembered today.The Cocktail Party...
and "
Old Possum's Book of Practical CatsOld Possum's Book of Practical Cats is a collection of whimsical poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. Its contents are widely known as the basis for the record-setting musical Cats....
".
Eliot was born in Saint Louis, Missouri and moved to the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
in 1914 (at age 25). He became a
British subjectIn British nationality law, the term British subject has at different times had different meanings. The current definition of the term British subject is contained in the British Nationality Act 1981.- Prior to 1949 :...
in 1927 at the age of 39. Of his nationality and its role in his work, Eliot said: "
[My poetry] wouldn't be what it is if I'd been born in
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, and it wouldn't be what it is if I'd stayed in America. It's a combination of things. But in its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America."
Early life and education
Eliot was born into the
Eliot familyThe Eliot family is a distinguished American family and is one of the Boston Brahmins, originating in Boston, whose ancestors became wealthy and held sway over the American education system. Charles W. Eliot transformed Harvard from a college to a research institution, a model which many American...
of
St. Louis, MissouriSt. Louis is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. With an estimated population of 354,361 in 2008, it is the principal municipality of Greater St. Louis, population 2,866,517, the largest urban area in Missouri and sixteenth largest in the United States...
. His father,
Henry Ware EliotHenry Ware Eliot was an American industrialist and philanthropist who lived in St. Louis, Missouri.-Early life and education:...
(1843–1919), was a successful businessman, president and treasurer of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St. Louis; his mother, born
Charlotte Champe StearnsCharlotte Champe Stearns , was a poet, social worker, and the mother of T. S. Eliot.-Early life and education:She was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She became a poet and social worker.-Married life:...
(1843–1929), wrote poems and was also a social worker. Eliot was the last of six surviving children; his parents were both 44 years old when he was born. His four sisters were between eleven and nineteen years older than he; his brother was eight years older. Known to family and friends as Tom, he was the namesake of his maternal grandfather Thomas Stearns.
From 1898 to 1905 Eliot was a student at
Smith AcademyMary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School or "MICDS" is a secular, co-educational, private school for about 1,200 students in grades JK-12, separated into three different sections: JK-4th grade , 5th-8th grade , and 9th-12th grade . Its 100 acres campus is located in the St...
, a preparatory school for Washington University in St Louis. At the academy, Eliot studied Latin,
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
,
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
, and
German languageGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
s. Upon graduation he could have gone to
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
but his parents sent him to
Milton AcademyMilton Academy is a private, preparatory, coeducational boarding and day school in Milton, Massachusetts. The original Milton Academy was founded in 1798 but operations ceased decades later; the institution was re-established in 1884 by John Murray Forbes and other progressive philanthropists. Up...
(in
Milton, MassachusettsMilton is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States and part of the Greater Boston area. The population was 26,062 at the 2000 census. Milton is the birthplace of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush and architect Buckminster Fuller. Milton also has the highest percentage of...
, near Boston) for a preparatory year. There he met
Scofield ThayerScofield Thayer was an American poet and publisher, best known for his art collection, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and as a publisher and editor of the literary magazine The Dial during the 1920s....
, who would later publish
The Waste LandThe Waste Land[A] is a 434 line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922...
. He studied at Harvard from 1906 to 1909 and earned an
A.B.A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for four years, but can range from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
During this time he read
Arthur SymonsArthur William Symons , was a British poet, critic and magazine editor.-Life:Born in Wales, of Cornish parents, Symons was educated privately, spending much of his time in France and Italy. In 1884-1886 he edited four of Bernard Quaritch's Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles, and in 1888-1889 seven plays...
's
The Symbolist Movement in LiteratureArthur Symons's The Symbolist Movement in Literature, first published in 1899, and with additional material in 1919, is largely credited with bringing French Symbolism to the attention of Anglo-American literary circles. Its first two editions were vital influences on W. B. Yeats and T. S...
, where he first encountered
LaforgueJules Laforgue was an innovative French poet, often referred to as a Symbolist poet. Critics and commentators have also pointed to Impressionism as a direct influence and his poetry has been called "part-symbolist, part-impressionist"...
, Rimbaud, and
VerlainePaul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
. The
Harvard Advocate published some of his poems, and he became lifelong friends with
Conrad AikenConrad Potter Aiken was an American novelist and poet, whose work includes poetry, short stories, novels, and an autobiography.-Early years:...
. The following year Eliot earned a master's degree at Harvard. During the 1910–1911 school year, Eliot lived in
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, studying at the
SorbonneThe historic University of Paris was founded in the mid 12th century, likely between 1160 and 1170 , In 1970 it was reorganized as 13 autonomous universities...
and touring the continent.
Returning to Harvard in 1911 as a student in
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned...
, Eliot studied the writings of
F. H. BradleyFrancis Herbert Bradley, OM, was a British idealist philosopher.-Life:He was born at Clapham, Surrey, England . He was the child of Charles Bradley, an evangelical preacher, and Emma Linton, Charles's second wife...
,
BuddhismBuddhism, as traditionally conceived, is a path of salvation attained through insight into the ultimate nature of reality. It encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha...
, and
IndicIndic can refer to:* Indo-Aryan languages* Indic scripts* Related to South Asia* of or related to India ; see Indica...
philologyPhilology considers both form and meaning in linguistic expression, combining linguistics and literary studies.Classical philology is the philology of the Greek, Latin and Sanskrit languages...
. He learned
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
and
Pāli
to read some of the religious texts. He was awarded a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford in 1914. Before settling there he visited
MarburgMarburg is a city in Hesse, Germany, on the River Lahn. It is the main town of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district. Its population is 78,701, and its geographical position is .- Founding and early history :...
, Germany, where he planned to take a summer program in philosophy. When the First World War broke out, however, he went to London and then to Oxford.
In a letter to Aiken late in December 1914, Eliot, aged 26, wrote, "I am very dependent upon women (I mean female society)," and then added a complaint that he was still a virgin. Less than four months later, Thayer introduced Eliot to
CambridgeThe city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. It is also at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen....
governess Vivienne Haigh-Wood. Eliot was not happy at Merton and declined a second year there.
On 26 June 1915 Eliot married Haigh-Wood in a
register officeIn England and Wales, The Register Office is primarily the local office for the registration of births, deaths and marriages , and for the conducting of civil marriages...
. After a short unaccompanied visit to see his family in the United States, he returned to London and took several teaching jobs such as lecturing at
Birkbeck CollegeBirkbeck, University of London, sometimes referred to by its former name Birkbeck College or by the abbreviation BBK, is a constituent college of the University of London. At the undergraduate level, it aims at working people who want to study for degrees in the evenings...
,
University of LondonBased primarily in London, England, United Kingdom, the University of London is a federal mega university made up of 31 affiliates: 19 separate university institutions, and 12 research institutes...
. He continued to work on his dissertation and, in the spring of 1916, submitted it to Harvard. Because he did not appear in person to defend his dissertation, however; he was not awarded a
Ph.D.Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated PhD , for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", or alternatively, DPhil, for the equivalent , is an advanced academic degree awarded by universities...
(In 1964 his estate published the dissertation as
Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. BradleyFrancis Herbert Bradley, OM, was a British idealist philosopher.-Life:He was born at Clapham, Surrey, England . He was the child of Charles Bradley, an evangelical preacher, and Emma Linton, Charles's second wife...
.) During his university career, Eliot studied with
George SantayanaGeorge Santayana , was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States, wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters. Of his nearly 89 years, he spent 39 in the U.S...
,
Irving BabbittIrving Babbitt was an American academic and literary critic, noted for his founding role in a movement that became known as the New Humanism, a significant influence on literary discussion and conservative thought in the period between 1910 to 1930...
,
Henri BergsonHenri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century.- Overview :...
, C. R. Lanman,
Josiah RoyceJosiah Royce was an American objective idealist philosopher.-Life:Royce, born in Grass Valley, California, grew up in pioneer California very soon after the California Gold Rush. He received the B.A...
,
Bertrand RussellBertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was an English philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. Although he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the...
, and
Harold JoachimHarold Henry Joachim was a British idealist philosopher. He was a disciple of Francis Herbert Bradley, and is now identified with the movement British Idealism, in its later days...
.
Bertrand Russell took an interest in Vivien Eliot (the spelling she preferred) while the newlyweds stayed in his flat. Some scholars have suggested that she and Russell had an affair (see Carole Seymour-Jones,
Painted Shadow), but these allegations have never been confirmed. In a private paper written in his sixties, Eliot confessed: "I came to persuade myself that I was in love with Vivienne simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also under the influence of
PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the 20th century. He is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry...
) that she would save the poet by keeping him in England. To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came
The Waste Land."
After leaving Merton, Eliot worked as a schoolteacher, most notably at
Highgate SchoolSir Roger Cholmeley's School at Highgate is a British independent school in Highgate, London, England. It is a member of both the Headmaster's Conference and the Eton Group. Highgate recently made the move towards co-education ending over 400 years of single sex education...
(where he taught the young
John BetjemanSir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack". He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
) and later at the
Royal Grammar School, High WycombeSee Royal Grammar School for the other schools with the name RGS.The Royal Grammar School High Wycombe is a selective grammar school situated in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England. As a state school it does not charge fees for students to attend, but they must pass an entrance exam...
. To earn extra money, he wrote book reviews and lectured at evening extension courses. In 1917 he took a position at
Lloyds BankLloyds Bank Plc was a British commercial bank which operated in England and Wales from 1765 until its merger into Lloyds TSB in 1995. It expanded during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and took over a number of smaller banking companies...
in London, working on foreign accounts. On a trip to Paris during August 1920, Eliot met the writer
James JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish expatriate author, playwright and poet of the 20th century. He is known for his landmark novel Ulysses and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake , as well as the short story collection Dubliners and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of...
and artist
Wyndham LewisPercy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
. After the meeting Eliot said he found Joyce arrogant (Joyce doubted Eliot's ability as a poet at the time), but the two soon became friends, with Eliot's visiting Joyce whenever he was in Paris. In 1925 Eliot left Lloyds to join the publishing firm Faber and Gwyer (later
Faber and FaberFaber and Faber, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music books,...
), where he remained for the rest of his career. He eventually became a director of the firm. Wyndham Lewis and Eliot became close friends, a friendship leading to Lewis's well-known painting of Eliot (produced in 1938).
Later life in England
In 1927 Eliot took two important steps in his self-definition. On 29 June he converted to
AnglicanismAnglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures...
, and in November he dropped his American citizenship and became a
British subjectIn British nationality law, the term British subject has at different times had different meanings. The current definition of the term British subject is contained in the British Nationality Act 1981.- Prior to 1949 :...
. In 1928 Eliot summarised his beliefs in the preface to his book,
For Lancelot Andrewes, noting that "the general point of view
[of the book's essays] may be described as
classicistClassicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion." Eliot was a
churchwardenA churchwarden is a lay official in a parish church of the Anglican Communion, usually working as a part-time volunteer. Holders of these positions are ex officio members of the parish board, usually called a vestry, parish council, or parochial church council.-Responsibilities of...
of his parish church, Saint Stephen's, Gloucester Road, London, and a life member of the
Society of King Charles the MartyrThe Society of King Charles the Martyr is an Anglican devotional society and one of the Catholic Societies of the Church of England....
.
By 1932 Eliot had been contemplating a
separationLegal separation is a legal process by which a married couple may formalise a de facto separation whilst remaining legally married...
from his wife for some time. When
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
offered him the
Charles Eliot NortonCharles Eliot Norton, was a leading American author, social critic, and professor of art. He was a militant idealist, a progressive social reformer, and a liberal activist whom many of his contemporaries considered the most cultivated man in the United States.-Biography:Norton was born at...
professorship for the 1932-1933 academic year he accepted and left Vivien in England. Upon his return in ,Eliot officially separated from her, avoiding all but one meeting with her between his leaving for America in 1932 and her death in 1947. (In 1938 Vivien was committed to the Northumberland House mental hospital,
Stoke NewingtonStoke Newington is a district in the London Borough of Hackney. It is north-east of Charing Cross.-Boundaries:In modern terms, Stoke Newington can be roughly defined by the N16 postcode area . Its southern boundary with Dalston is quite ill-defined too...
, and remained there till her death. Although Eliot was still her husband during this time, he never visited.)
From 1946 to 1957, Eliot shared a flat with his friend
John Davy HaywardJohn Davy Hayward was an English editor, critic, anthologist and bibliophile.-Early life:Hayward was educated at Gresham's School and in France before going up to King's College, Cambridge in 1923 to read English and modern languages...
, who gathered and archived Eliot's papers, styling himself "Keeper of the Eliot Archive". Hayward also collected Eliot's pre-"Prufrock" verse, commercially published after Eliot's death as
Poems Written in Early Youth. When Eliot and Hayward separated their household in 1957, Hayward retained his collection of Eliot's papers, which he bequeathed to
King's College, CambridgeKing's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.Founded in 1441, the college's formal name is "The King's College of Our Lady and St. Nicholas in Cambridge". It is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the university.- History :King's was founded in 1441 by...
in 1965.
Eliot's second marriage was happy but short. On 10 January 1957 he married
Esmé Valerie FletcherValerie Eliot née Esmé Valerie Fletcher is the surviving widow and second wife of the Nobel prize winning poet T. S. Eliot.-Life:She married Eliot, thirty-eight years her senior, on January 10, 1957...
, 37 years younger than he. In sharp contrast to his first marriage, Eliot knew Fletcher well, as she had been his secretary at
Faber and FaberFaber and Faber, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music books,...
since August 1949; they were introduced to each other by
Collin BrooksCollin Brooks , frequently known as "CB"), was a British journalist, writer, and broadcaster.-Early life and background:...
. They kept their wedding secret for the sake of privacy. The ceremony was held in a church at 6.15 a.m. with virtually no one in attendance other than his wife's parents. Since Eliot's death, Valerie Eliot has dedicated her time to preserving his legacy; she has edited and annotated
The Letters of T. S. Eliot and a facsimile of the draft of
The Waste Land.
Eliot died of
emphysemaEmphysema is a lung disease, characterized by an abnormal, permanent enlargement of air spaces distal to the terminal bronchioles. The disease is coupled with the destruction of walls, but without obvious fibrosis...
in London on 4 January 1965. For many years he had had health problems owing to his heavy smoking, and had often being laid low with
bronchitisAcute bronchitis is an inflammation of the large bronchi in the lungs that is usually caused by viruses or bacteria and may last several days or weeks. Characteristic symptoms include cough, sputum production, and shortness of breath and wheezing related to the obstruction of the inflamed airways...
or
tachycardiaTachycardia comes from the Greek words tachys and kardia . Tachycardia typically refers to a heart rate that exceeds the normal range for a resting heartrate...
. His body was cremated at
Golders Green CrematoriumGolders Green Crematorium and Mausoleum was the first crematorium to be opened in London, and one of the oldest crematoria in Britain. It is owned by the London Cremation Co plc, and opened in 1902, designed by the architect Sir Ernest George....
. According to Eliot's wishes, the ashes were taken to St Michael's Church in
East CokerEast Coker is a village and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated two miles south of Yeovil in the South Somerset district. The village has a population of 1,781...
, the village from which his ancestors had emigrated to America. There, a simple wall plaque commemorates him with a quotation from his poem "East Coker": "In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning." On the second anniversary of his death, he was commemorated by the installation of a large stone was placed in the floor of
Poets' CornerPoets’ Corner is the name traditionally given to a section of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey due to the number of poets, playwrights, and writers now buried and commemorated there....
in London's
Westminster AbbeyThe Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, which is almost always referred to popularly and informally as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in Westminster, London, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster...
. The stone is inscribed with his dates, his Order of Merit, and a quotation from his poem, "Little Gidding": "the communication / Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond / the language of the living."
Wesleyan University Press
In the early 1960s, Eliot, by then in failing health, served as a special editorial consultant to the
Wesleyan University PressWesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University . The Press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist...
(Connecticut), a part of
Wesleyan UniversityWesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the now secular university was the first institution of higher...
. The Press had been founded (in its present form) in 1957. Eliot specialized in, among other things, seeking out promising new poets in England and Europe. In that capacity, he was instrumental in having helped establish the Press as the leader among American academic presses in publishing award-winning poetry from both new and established poets.
Poetry
For a poet of his stature, Eliot produced a relatively small amount of poetry. He was aware of this early in his career. He wrote to J. H. Woods, one of his former Harvard professors, that, "My reputation in London is built upon one small volume of verse, and is kept up by printing two or three more poems in a year. The only thing that matters is that these should be perfect in their kind, so that each should be an event."
Typically, Eliot first published his poems individually in periodicals or in small books or pamphlets, and then collected them in books. His first collection was
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917). In 1920 Eliot published more poems in
Ara Vos Prec (London) and
Poems: 1920 (New York). These had the same poems (in a different order) except that "Ode" in the British edition was replaced with "Hysteria" in the American edition. In 1925 Eliot collected
The Waste Land and the poems in
Prufrock and
Poems into one volume and added "The Hollow Men" to form
Poems: 1909–1925. From then on he updated this work (as
Collected Poems). Exceptions are:
- Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is a collection of whimsical poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. Its contents are widely known as the basis for the record-setting musical Cats....
(1939)—a collection of light verse.
- Poems Written in Early Youth (posthumously published in 1967)—consisting mainly of poems published between 1907 and 1910 in The Harvard Advocate
The Harvard Advocate, the literary magazine of Harvard College, is the oldest continuously published college literary magazine in the United States. The magazine was founded by Charles S. Gage and William G. Peckham in 1866 and, except for a hiatus during the last years of World War II, has...
, the student-run literary magazine at Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
.
- Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917 (posthumously published in 1997)—poems, verse and drafts Eliot never intended to be published. Densely annotated by Christopher Ricks
Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University and Co-Director of the Editorial Institute at Boston University, and was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford from 2004 to 2009...
.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
In 1915
Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the 20th century. He is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry...
, overseas editor of
Poetry magazine, recommended to
Harriet MonroeHarriet Monroe was an American editor, scholar, literary critic, and patron of the arts. Monroe is best known as the founder and long time editor of Poetry Magazine. She was born in Chicago, Illinois and died in Arequipa, Peru.Monroe was the first editor at Poetry Magazine when she founded it in...
, the magazine's founder, that she publish "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Although the character Prufrock seems to be middle-aged, Eliot wrote most of the poem when he was only 22. Its now-famous opening lines, comparing the evening sky to "a patient etherised upon a table," were considered shocking and offensive, especially at a time when the poetry of the
GeorgiansThe Georgians are a South Caucasian people and nation mainly centered in Georgia. They also live in Turkey, Russia, the United States, Iran, and other countries....
was hailed for its derivations of the 19th century
Romantic PoetsRomanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution...
. The poem follows the conscious experience of a man, Prufrock (relayed in the "stream of consciousness" form characteristic of the Modernists), lamenting his physical and intellectual inertia, the lost opportunities in his life and lack of spiritual progress, with the recurrent theme of carnal love unattained. Critical opinion is divided as to whether the narrator leaves his residence during the course of the narration. The locations described can be interpreted either as actual physical experiences, mental recollections, or even as symbolic images from the sub-conscious mind, as, for example, in the refrain "In the room the women come and go."
Its mainstream reception can be gauged from a review in
The Times Literary SupplementThe Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
on 21 June 1917: "The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation to
poetry…"
The poem's structure was heavily influenced by Eliot's extensive reading of
Dante AlighieriDurante degli Alighieri , commonly known as Dante, was an Italian poet of the Middle Ages. His central work, the Divina Commedia , is often considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.In...
(in the Italian). The poem also refers to
HamletThe Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601. The play, set in Denmark, recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father, the King, and then...
and other literary works : Eliot further developed this technique of
allusionAn allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, a place, event, literary work, myth, or work of art, either directly or by implication. M.H. Abrams defined allusion as "a brief reference, explicit or indirect, to a person, place or event, or to another literary...
and quotation in his subsequent poetry.
The Waste Land
In October 1922 Eliot published
The Waste LandThe Waste Land[A] is a 434 line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922...
in
The Criterion. It was composed during a period of personal difficulty for Eliot—his marriage was failing, and both he and Vivien were suffering from nervous disorders. The poem is often read as a representation of the disillusionment of the post-war generation. That year Eliot lived in Lausanne, Switzerland to take a treatment and to convalesce from a break-down. There he wrote the final section, "What the Thunder Said," which contains frequent references to mountains. Before the poem's publication as a book, in December 1922, Eliot distanced himself from its vision of despair. On 15 November 1922 he wrote to
Richard AldingtonRichard Aldington born Edward Godfree Aldington, was an English writer and poet.Aldington was best known for his World War I poetry, the 1929 novel, Death of a Hero, and the controversy arising from his 1955 Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry...
, saying, "As for
The Waste LandThe Waste Land[A] is a 434 line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922...
, that is a thing of the past so far as I am concerned and I am now feeling toward a new form and style." The poem is known for its obscure nature—its slippage between satire and prophecy; its abrupt changes of speaker, location, and time; its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures. Despite this, it has become a touchstone of modern literature, a poetic counterpart to a novel published in the same year,
James JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish expatriate author, playwright and poet of the 20th century. He is known for his landmark novel Ulysses and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake , as well as the short story collection Dubliners and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of...
's
UlyssesUlysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris...
. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month"; "I will show you fear in a handful of dust"; and "
ShantihThe Shanti Mantras or "Peace Mantras" are Hindu prayers for peace from the Vedas.Generally they are recited at the beginning and end of religious rituals and discourses....
shantih shantih," the utterance, in Sanskrit, with which the poem closes.
The Hollow Men
The Hollow MenThe Hollow Men is a major poem by TS Eliot, the Nobel-Prize-winning modernist poet. Its themes are, like many of Eliot's poems, overlapping a fragmentary, but it is recognised to be concerned most with post-War Europe under the Treaty of Versailles , the difficulty of hope and religious...
appeared in 1925. For the critic
Edmund WilsonEdmund Wilson was an American writer and literary critic. Wilson was considered one of the preeminent American literary critics.-Early life:...
, it marked "the nadir of the phase of despair and desolation given such effective expression in '
The Waste LandThe Waste Land[A] is a 434 line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922...
'." It is Eliot's major poem of the late twenties. Similar to other work, its themes are overlapping and fragmentary. It is however, widely recognized to be concerned with: post-War Europe under the
Treaty of VersaillesThe Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
(which Eliot despised—compare "
GerontionGerontion is a poem by T. S. Eliot that was first published in 1920. The work relates the opinions and impressions of a gerontic, or elderly man through a dramatic monologue which describes Europe after World War I through the eyes of a man who has lived the majority of his life in the 19th Century....
"); the difficulty of hope and religious conversion; and, some critics argue, Eliot's failed marriage (by some accounts, Vivien had been having an affair with
Bertrand RussellBertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was an English philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. Although he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the...
).
Allen TateJohn Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Biography:...
, reviewing the 1926 volume, perceived a shift in Eliot’s method and noted that,
"The mythologies disappear altogether in The Hollow MenThe Hollow Men is a major poem by TS Eliot, the Nobel-Prize-winning modernist poet. Its themes are, like many of Eliot's poems, overlapping a fragmentary, but it is recognised to be concerned most with post-War Europe under the Treaty of Versailles , the difficulty of hope and religious...
’. This is a striking claim for a poem as indebted to DanteDurante degli Alighieri , commonly known as Dante, was an Italian poet of the Middle Ages. His central work, the Divina Commedia , is often considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.In...
as anything else in Eliot’s early work, to say little of the modern English mythology — the ‘Old Guy [Fawkes]’ of the Gunpowder Plot—or the colonial and agrarianAgrarianism is a social and political philosophy which stresses the viewpoint that a rural or semi-rural lifestyle, most especially agricultural pursuits such as farming or ranching, leads to a fuller, happier, cleaner, and more sustainable way of life for both individuals and society as a whole.-...
mythos of ConradJoseph Conrad was a Polish-born British novelist, who in 1886 became a British subject....
and Frazer, which, at least for reasons of textual history, echo in The Waste LandThe Waste Land[A] is a 434 line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922...
.
The ‘continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity’ that is so characteristic of his mythical method remained in fine form.
The Hollow MenThe Hollow Men is a major poem by TS Eliot, the Nobel-Prize-winning modernist poet. Its themes are, like many of Eliot's poems, overlapping a fragmentary, but it is recognised to be concerned most with post-War Europe under the Treaty of Versailles , the difficulty of hope and religious...
contains some of Eliot's most famous lines, most notably its conclusion:
- This is the way the world ends
- This is the way the world ends
- This is the way the world ends
- Not with a bang but a whimper.
Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday is the first long poem written by Eliot after his 1927 conversion to
AnglicanismThe Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England, the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the oldest among the communion's thirty-eight independent national and regional churches...
. Published in
1930The year 1930 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*January 6 - The first literary character licensing agreement is signed by A. A. Milne, granting Stephen Slesinger U.S...
, this poem deals with the struggle that ensues when one who has lacked faith strives to move towards God.
Sometimes referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem",
Ash Wednesday is richly but ambiguously allusive and deals with the aspiration to move from spiritual barrenness to hope for human salvation, inspired by
DanteDANTE is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various National Research and Education Networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
's
Purgatorio. The style is different from the poetry which predates his conversion.
Ash Wednesday and the poems that followed had a more casual, melodic, and contemplative method.
Many critics were "particularly enthusiastic concerning
Ash Wednesday."
Edwin MuirEdwin Muir was an Orcadian poet, novelist and noted translator born on a farm in Deerness on the Orkney Islands...
maintained that "
Ash Wednesday is one of the most moving poems [Eliot] has written, and perhaps the most perfect." while in other quarters it was not well received. The poem's groundwork of orthodox Christianity discomfited many of the more secular
literatiLiterati may refer to:*Intellectuals*The scholar-bureaucrats or literati of imperial China**Literati painting, also known as the Southern School of painting, developed by Chinese literati...
.
Four Quartets
Although many critics preferred his earlier work, Eliot and many other critics considered
Four Quartets his masterpiece. It is the work which led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The
Four Quartets draws upon his knowledge of mysticism and philosophy. It consists of four long poems, each first published separately:
Burnt Norton (1936),
East Coker (1940), The
Dry Salvages (1941) and
Little Gidding (1942). Each has five sections. Although they resist easy characterisation, each begins with a rumination on the geographical location of its title, and each meditates on the nature of time in some important respect—theological, historical, physical—and its relation to the human condition. Also, each is associated with one of the four classical elements: air, earth, water, and fire. They approach the same ideas in varying but overlapping ways, and are open to a diversity of interpretations.
Burnt Norton asks what it means to consider things that might have been. We see the shell of an abandoned house, and Eliot toys with the idea that all these "merely possible" realities are present together, but invisible to us: All the possible ways people might walk across a courtyard add up to a vast dance we can't see; children who aren't there are hiding in the bushes.
East Coker continues the examination of time and meaning, focusing in a famous passage on the nature of language and poetry. Out of darkness, Eliot continues to reassert a solution ("I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope").
The Dry Salvages treats the element of water, via images of river and sea. It again strives to contain opposites ("…the past and future/Are conquered, and reconciled").
Little Gidding (the element of fire) is the most anthologized of the Quartets. Eliot's own experiences as an air raid warden in
The BlitzThe Blitz was the sustained bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, in World War II. While the Blitz hit many towns and cities across the country, it began with the bombing of London for 57 consecutive nights...
power the poem, and he imagines meeting Dante during the German bombing. The beginning of the Quartets ("Houses…/Are removed, destroyed") had become a violent everyday experience; this creates an animation, where for the first time he talks of Love—as the driving force behind all experience. From this background, the Quartets end with an affirmation of
Julian of NorwichJulian of Norwich is thought of as one of the greatest English mystics. Little is known of her life aside from her writings. Even her name is uncertain, the name "Julian" coming from the Church of St Julian in Norwich, where she was an anchoress...
"all shall be well and/All manner of thing shall be well".
The
Four Quartets cannot be understood without reference to Christian thought, traditions, and history. Eliot draws upon the theology, art, symbolism and language of such figures as Dante, and mystics St. John of the Cross and
Julian of NorwichJulian of Norwich is thought of as one of the greatest English mystics. Little is known of her life aside from her writings. Even her name is uncertain, the name "Julian" coming from the Church of St Julian in Norwich, where she was an anchoress...
. The "deeper communion" sought in East Coker, the "hints" and whispers of children, the sickness that must grow worse in order to find healing," and the exploration which inevitably leads us home all point to the pilgrim's path along the road of
sanctificationSanctification is an ancient concept widespread among religions that refers to anything blessed or set apart for special purposes, from totem poles to temple vessels, to the change brought about in a human believer. The word sanctification refers to the act or process of making sacred or setting...
. <--or redemption?-->.
Plays
With the important exception of his
magnum opusMagnum opus , from the Latin meaning great work, refers to the largest, and perhaps the best, greatest, most popular, or most renowned achievement of an author, artist, or composer.The term Great Work is also used in several...
Four QuartetsFour Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published individually over a six-year period. The first poem, "Burnt Norton", was written and published with a collection of his early works following the production of Eliot's play, Murder in the Cathedral...
, Eliot directed much of his creative energies after
Ash Wednesday"Ash Wednesday" is the first long poem written by T. S. Eliot after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism. Published in 1930 , this poem deals with the struggle that ensues when one who has lacked faith in the past strives to move towards God.Sometimes referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem",...
to writing plays in verse, mostly comedies or plays with redemptive endings. He was long a critic and admirer of Elizabethan and
JacobeanJacobean indicates the period of English history that coincides with the reign of James VII of Scotland :*Jacobean era*Jacobean architecture*Jacobean literature*Jacobean English...
verse drama (witness his allusions to
WebsterJohn Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.- Biography :Webster's life is obscure, and the dates of his...
,
MiddletonThomas Middleton was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson as among the most successful and prolific of playwrights who wrote their best plays during the Jacobean period. He was one of the few Renaissance dramatists to achieve equal success...
,
ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
and
KydThomas Kyd was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama....
in
The Waste LandThe Waste Land[A] is a 434 line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922...
.)
In a 1933 lecture he said:
"Every poet would like, I fancy, to be able to think that he had some direct social utility. ... He would like to be something of a popular entertainer, and be able to think his own thoughts behind a tragic or a comic mask. He would like to convey the pleasures of poetry, not only to a larger audience, but to larger groups of people collectively; and the theatre is the best place in which to do it."
After
The Waste LandThe Waste Land[A] is a 434 line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922...
(1922), Eliot wrote that he was "now feeling toward a new form and style." One project he had in mind was writing a play in verse with a
jazzJazz is a musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
tempo featuring Sweeney, a character who appeared in a number of his poems. Eliot did not finish it. He did publish separately two pieces of what he had written. The two,
Fragment of a ProloguePrologue , or prolog, is a preface to the story, setting up the story, giving background information and other miscellaneous information...
(1926) and
Fragment of an AgonAgon is an ancient Greek word with several meanings:*In one sense, it meant a contest, competition, or challenge that was held in connection with religious festivals....
(1927) were published together in 1932 as
Sweeney AgonistesThe word Agonistes, found as an epithet following a person's name, means “the struggler” or “the combatant.” It is most often an allusion to John Milton’s 1671 verse tragedy Samson Agonistes, which recounts the end of Samson's life, when he is a blind captive of the Philistines, described as being...
. Although Eliot noted that this was not intended to be a one-act play, it is sometimes performed as one.
A pageant play by Eliot called
The RockThe Rock was a pageant play with words by T.S. Eliot, first performed at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London on 28 May 1934.In a prefatory note Eliot disclaimed full responsibility for the text, saying "I cannot consider myself the author of the "play", but only of the words which are printed here." ...
was performed in 1934. This was a benefit for churches in the
Diocese of LondonThe Anglican Diocese of London forms part of the Province of Canterbury in England.Historically the diocese covered a large area north of the Thames, and bordered the dioceses of Norwich and Lincoln to the north and west...
. Much of the work was a collaborative effort; Eliot accepted credit only for the authorship of one scene and the choruses. The pageant would have a sympathetic audience, but one largely consisting of the common churchman, a new audience for whom Eliot had to modify his style, often called "erudite."
George BellGeorge Kennedy Allen Bell was an Anglican theologian, Dean of Canterbury , Bishop of Chichester, member of the House of Lords and a pioneer of the Ecumenical Movement.-Early career:...
, the
Bishop of ChichesterThe Bishop of Chichester is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Chichester in the Province of Canterbury. The diocese covers the Counties of East and West Sussex. The see is in the City of Chichester where the seat is located at the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity...
, was instrumental in connecting Eliot with producer E. Martin Browne for the production of
The Rock. Bell asked Eliot to write another play for the
Canterbury FestivalThe Canterbury Festival is Kent's international festival of the arts. It takes place in Canterbury and surrounding towns and villages each October and includes performances of a variety of types of music, ranging from Opera and Oratorio to art, comedy and theatre...
in 1935. This play,
Murder in the CathedralMurder in the Cathedral is a poetic drama by T. S. Eliot that portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, first performed in 1935...
, concerning the death of
martyrA martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce a belief, usually religious.-Meaning:...
Thomas BecketThomas Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 to his death. He is venerated as a saint and martyr by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion...
, was more under Eliot's control. Eliot admitted being influenced by, among others, the works of 17th century preacher
Lancelot AndrewesLancelot Andrewes was an English clergyman and scholar, who held high positions in the Church of England during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. During the latter's reign, Andrewes served successively as Bishop of Chichester, Ely and Winchester and oversaw the translation of the...
.
Murder in the CathedralMurder in the Cathedral is a poetic drama by T. S. Eliot that portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, first performed in 1935...
has been a standard choice for Anglican and Roman Catholic curricula for many years.
Following his ecclesiastical plays, Eliot worked on commercial plays for more general audiences. These were
The Family ReunionThe Family Reunion is a play by T. S. Eliot. Written mostly in blank verse, it incorporates elements from Greek drama and mid-twentieth-century detective plays to portray the hero's journey from guilt to redemption. The play was unsuccessful when first presented in 1939, and was later regarded as...
(1939),
The Cocktail PartyThe Cocktail Party is a play by T. S. Eliot. Elements of the play are based on Alcestis, by the Ancient Greek playwright Euripides. The play was the most popular of Eliot's seven plays in his lifetime, although his 1935 play, Murder in the Cathedral, is better remembered today.The Cocktail Party...
(1949),
The Confidential Clerkthumb|1st edition cover The Confidential Clerk is a comic verse play by T. S. Eliot.-Synopsis:Sir Claude Mulhammer, a wealthy entrepreneur, decides to smuggle his illegitimate son Colby into the household by employing him as his confidential clerk...
(1953) and
The Elder StatesmanThe Elder Statesman is a play in verse by T. S. Eliot first performed in 1958 and published in 1959.-Overview:T. S. Eliot once quipped: “A play should give you something to think about...
(1958). The
BroadwayBroadway Theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, is the theatre associated with the 40 large professional theaters with 500 seats or more located in the Theatre District, New York in Manhattan, New York City...
production in
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
of
The Cocktail PartyThe Cocktail Party is a play by T. S. Eliot. Elements of the play are based on Alcestis, by the Ancient Greek playwright Euripides. The play was the most popular of Eliot's seven plays in his lifetime, although his 1935 play, Murder in the Cathedral, is better remembered today.The Cocktail Party...
received the 1950
Tony AwardThe Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Awards, recognize achievement in live American theatre and are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are for Broadway productions and...
for Best Play.
The dramatic works of Eliot are generally less well known than his poems.
As critic
Although best known as a poet, Eliot also made significant contributions to the field of literary criticism (Robinson). In particular, Eliot strongly influenced the school of
New CriticismNew Criticism was a dominant trend in English and American literary criticism of the mid twentieth century, from the 1920s to the early 1960s. Its adherents were emphatic in their advocacy of close reading and attention to texts themselves, and their rejection of criticism based on extra-textual...
. While somewhat self-deprecating and minimizing of his work—he once said his criticism was merely a “by-product” of his “private poetry-workshop”—Eliot is considered by some to be one of the greatest literary critics of the 20th century. The critic
William EmpsonSir William Empson was an English literary critic and poet.He is sometimes praised as the greatest English literary critic after Samuel Johnson and William Hazlitt, and widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, fundamental to the New Critics...
once said, "I do not know for certain how much of my own mind [Eliot] invented, let alone how much of it is a reaction against him or indeed a consequence of misreading him. He is a very penetrating influence, perhaps not unlike the east wind."
In his critical essay “
Tradition and the Individual Talent"Tradition and the Individual Talent" is an essay written by poet and literary theorist T. S. Eliot. The essay was first published, in two parts, in "The Egoist" and later in Eliot's first book of criticism, "The Sacred Wood"...
,” Eliot argues that art must be understood not in a vacuum, but in the context of previous pieces of art: “In a peculiar sense [an artist or poet]… must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past.” This essay was one of the most important works of the school of New Criticism. Specifically, it introduced the idea that the value of one work of art must be viewed in the context of all previous work—a “simultaneous order” or works. It has also been argued that "Tradition and the Individual Talent" served to keep out the public-at-large from engaging in literature (or having literature in engage in them): "T. S. Eliot’s insistence in essays such as 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (1917) that the young poet need only assimilate the (all-male) canon of established authors contributed to public definitions of literary modernism that would exclude mass culture." Conversely, Eliot's work regarding music—particularly his article "Marie Lloyd"—may have helped lead to the idea that popular culture could be the subject of criticism.
Also important to New Criticism was the idea—as articulated in Eliot’s essay "
Hamlet and His Problems"Hamlet and His Problems" is a 1920 essay by T. S. Eliot which offers a critical reading of Hamlet. Originally published in Eliot's The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, this essay introduced his concept of objective correlative. The essay is also noted for its bold description of Hamlet...
”—of an “
objective correlativeAn objective correlative is a literary term referring to a symbolic article used to provide explicit, rather than implicit, access to such traditionally inexplicable concepts as emotion or colour.- Origin of terminology :Popularized by T. S...
,” which posits a connection among the words of the text and events, states of mind, and experiences. This notion concedes that a poem means what it says, but suggests that there can be a non-subjective judgment based on different readers’ different—but perhaps corollary—interpretations of a work.
More generally, New Critics took a cue from Eliot in regards to his “‘classical’ ideals and his religious thought; his attention to the poetry and drama of the early seventeenth century; his deprecation of the Romantics, especially Shelley; his proposition that good poems constitute ‘not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion'; and his insistence that ‘poets…at present must be difficult.’”
Eliot’s essays were a major factor in the revival of interest in the
metaphysical poetsThe metaphysical poets were a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century, who shared an interest in metaphysical concerns and a common way of investigating them. The label "metaphysical" was given much later by Samuel Johnson in his Life of Cowley. These poets themselves did not form a...
. Eliot particularly praised the metaphysical poets' ability to show experience as both psychological and sensual, while at the same time infusing this portrayal with—in Eliot's view—wit and uniqueness. Eliot's essay "The Metaphysical Poets," along with giving new significance and attention to metaphysical poetry, introduced his now well-known definition of "unified sensibility," which is considered by some to mean the same thing as the term "metaphysical."
Some have argued that Eliot can be best understood as critic through his poetry—that one reflects the other and that Eliot has a unique perspective as a poet-critic. His “
Four QuartetsFour Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published individually over a six-year period. The first poem, "Burnt Norton", was written and published with a collection of his early works following the production of Eliot's play, Murder in the Cathedral...
”, a collection of four long poems, is self-aware in a way that opens "the poem up to modern critical movements in which understanding is made contingent on the perspective in which it is installed.” Eliot’s self-examination through poetry reflects his belief in the objective correlative. Eliot’s 1922 poem
The Waste LandThe Waste Land[A] is a 434 line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922...
—which at the time of its publication, many critics believed to be a joke or hoax—also can be better understood in light of his work as a critic. Eliot had argued that a poet must write “programmatic criticism"; that is, a poet should write to advance his own interests rather than to advance “historical scholarship". Viewed from Eliot's critical lens,
The Waste Land likely shows his personal despair about
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
rather than an objective historical understanding of it.
Some have argued that late in his career, Eliot recanted much of his earlier work as a critic. However, this is disputed. At that time, Eliot stressed the importance of every poet creating his or her own unique personality through his work.
Other works
In 1939 Eliot published a book of light verse,
Old Possum's Book of Practical CatsOld Possum's Book of Practical Cats is a collection of whimsical poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. Its contents are widely known as the basis for the record-setting musical Cats....
— "Old Possum" being a name Ezra Pound had bestowed upon him. This first edition had an illustration of the author on the cover. In 1954 the composer
Alan RawsthorneAlan Rawsthorne was a British composer.-Life:Rawsthorne was born in Haslingden, Lancashire. After attempting careers in dentistry and architecture, he decided instead to study music in Manchester and Berlin. His breakthrough came with the Theme and Variations for two violins and Symphonic Studies...
set six of the poems for speaker and orchestra, in a work entitled
Practical Cats. After Eliot's death, it became the basis of the
West EndWest End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's "Theatreland". Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking world...
and
BroadwayBroadway Theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, is the theatre associated with the 40 large professional theaters with 500 seats or more located in the Theatre District, New York in Manhattan, New York City...
hit musical by
Andrew Lloyd WebberAndrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre, the elder son of organist William Lloyd Webber and brother of the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber...
,
CatsCats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot. It introduced the song standard "Memory."...
.
In 1958 the
Archbishop of CanterburyAlso see Leaders of ChristianityThe Archbishop of Canterbury is the chief bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury, the see that churches must be in communion with in order to be...
appointed Eliot to a commission that produced
The Revised Psalter(1963). A harsh critic of Eliot's,
C. S. LewisClive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as Jack, was an Irish-born British novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist...
, was also a member of the commission, where their antagonism turned into a friendship.
Literature and literary criticism
Eliot's poetry was first criticized as not being poetry at all. Many critics attacked his practice of widespread interweaving of quotations from other authors into his work. "Notes on the Waste Land," which follows the poem, gives the source of many of these, but not all. Eliot defended this as a necessary salvaging of tradition in an age of fragmentation, and completely integral to the work, adding richness through unexpected juxtaposition. Other critics have condemned the practice as showing a lack of originality, and for
plagiarismPlagiarism, as defined in the 1995 Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary, is the "use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work." Within academia, plagiarism by students, professors, or researchers is considered...
. The prominent critic
F. W. BatesonFrederick Wilse Bateson was an English literary scholar and critic.Bateson was born in Cheshire, and educated at Charterhouse and at Trinity College, Oxford, where he took a BA in English , and then the B.Litt., which he completed in 1927...
published an essay called "T. S. Eliot: The Poetry of Pseudo-Learning". Eliot wrote in
The Sacred Wood: "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different."
Canadian academic Robert Ian Scott pointed out that the title of
The Waste Land and some of the images had previously appeared in the work of a minor
KentuckyThe Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. Kentucky is a Southern state situated in the Upland South, although the state is infrequently placed, geographically and culturally, in the Midwest. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a...
poet,
Madison CaweinMadison Cawein was a poet from Louisville, Kentucky, whose poem "Waste Land" has been linked with T. S. Eliot's later The Waste Land....
(1865–1914).
Bevis HillierBevis Hillier is an English art historian, author and journalist. He has written on Art Deco, and also for his biography of Sir John Betjeman.-Life and work:...
compared Cawein's lines "… come and go/Around its ancient portico" with Eliot's "… come and go/talking of
MichelangeloMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer...
". (This line actually appears in Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and not in
The Waste Land.) Cawein's "Waste Land" had appeared in the January 1913 issue of the Chicago magazine
PoetryPoetry, published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately 90,000 submissions.Poetry has been financed since...
(which contained an article by Ezra Pound on London poets). But scholars are continually finding new sources for Eliot's
Waste Land, often in odd places.
Many famous fellow writers and critics have paid tribute to Eliot. According to poet
Ted HughesEdward James Hughes OM was an English poet and children's writer, known as Ted Hughes. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to the American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 through 1962...
, "Each year Eliot's presence reasserts itself at a deeper level, to an audience that is surprised to find itself more chastened, more astonished, more humble."
Hugh KennerWilliam Hugh Kenner , was a Canadian literary scholar, critic and professor.Kenner was born in Peterborough, Ontario on January 7, 1923; his father taught classics...
commented, "He has been the most gifted and influential literary critic in English in the twentieth century." However, other writers have not supported this view. In one of his criticisms,
Samuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish writer, dramatist and poet. Beckett's work offers a bleak outlook on human culture and both formally and philosophically became increasingly minimalist....
suggests that Eliot's work belongs in what the reverse of "T. Eliot" spells.
C. S. LewisClive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as Jack, was an Irish-born British novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist...
thought Eliot's literary criticism "superficial and unscholarly". In a 1935 letter to a mutual friend of theirs,
Paul Elmer MorePaul Elmer More was an American journalist, critic, essayist and Christian apologist.-Biography:He was educated at Washington University in St. Louis and Harvard University...
, Lewis wrote that he considered the work of Eliot to be "a very great evil." In a 1943 letter to Eliot, Lewis expressed both admiration along with antagonism toward his views when he wrote: "I hope the fact that I find myself often contradicting you in print gives no offence; it is a kind of tribute to you—whenever I fall foul of some widespread contemporary view about literature I always seem to find that you have expressed it most clearly. One aims at the officers first in meeting an attack!"
Charges of anti-Semitism
Eliot has sometimes been charged with
anti-SemitismAntisemitism is prejudice against or hostility towards Jews, often rooted in hatred of their ethnic background, culture, or religion....
. Biographer
Lyndall GordonLyndall Gordon is a South African writer and former academic, known for her literary biographies. She was born in Cape Town and was an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, then a doctoral student at Columbia University. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford...
has noted that many in Eliot's milieu successfully eschewed such views. The issue has been thoroughly examined by eminent English literary critic
John GrossJohn Gross is an English literary critic, author, and anthologist. He was the editor of The Times Literary Supplement from 1974 to 1981, a book editor and book critic on the staff of The New York Times from 1983 to 1989, and theatre critic for The Sunday Telegraph from 1989 to 2005...
in an essay in
Commentary magazine, “Was T.S. Eliot a Scoundrel?”
Public expressions
The poem "
GerontionGerontion is a poem by T. S. Eliot that was first published in 1920. The work relates the opinions and impressions of a gerontic, or elderly man through a dramatic monologue which describes Europe after World War I through the eyes of a man who has lived the majority of his life in the 19th Century....
" contains a depiction of a landlord referred to only as the "
jewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
[who] squats on the window sill." Another much-quoted example is the poem, "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar", in which a character in the poem implicitly blames the Jews for the decline of
VeniceVenice is a city in northern Italy, the capital of the region Veneto, a population of 271,367 . Together with Padua, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area . The city historically was an independent nation...
: "The rats are underneath the piles/ The Jew is underneath the lot." In "A Cooking Egg", Eliot writes, "The red-eyed scavengers are creeping/ From Kentish Town and Golder's Green" (
Golders GreenGolders Green is an area in the London Borough of Barnet in London, England. Although having some earlier history, it is essentially a 19th century suburban development situated about 5.3 miles north west of Charing Cross and centred on the crossroads of Golders Green Road and Finchley Road.In the...
was a largely Jewish
suburbSuburbs are defined in various different ways around the world. They can be the residential areas of a large city, or separate residential communities within commuting distance of a city. Some suburbs have a degree of political autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city...
of London). On the other hand, commentators note that the publisher of "Gerontion" and "Burbank" was
John RodkerJohn Rodker was a British writer, modernist poet, and publisher of some of the major modernist figures. He was born in Manchester into a Jewish immigrant family, who moved to London while he was still young.-Career:...
. Additionally, Eliot mailed a draft of "Gerontion" to his friend Sidney Schiff for pre-publication editing and commentary. A third and perhaps most frequently cited "anti-semitic" poem, "Sweeney Among the Nightingales," was published by Eliot's friend
Leonard WoolfLeonard Sidney Woolf was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, perhaps best known as the widower of author Virginia Woolf.-Life:...
. None of these three men, who were all Jewish, considered the poems in question anti-semitic.
In a series of lectures given at the University of Virginia in 1933 and later published under the title "After Strange Gods" (1934), Eliot said, regarding a homogeneity of culture (and implying a traditional Christian community), "What is still more important is unity of religious background, and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable." In later years Eliot disavowed the book, and refused to allow any part to be reprinted.
Eliot also wrote a letter to the
Daily MailThe Daily Mail is a British daily tabloid newspaper. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper, The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982. Scottish and Irish editions of the paper were launched in...
in January 1932 which congratulated the paper for a series of laudatory articles on the rise of
Benito MussoliniBenito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini,
KSMOM GCTE was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism. He became the Prime Minister of Italy in 1922 and began using the title Il Duce by...
. In
The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) he says "…
totalitarianismTotalitarianism is a political system where the state, usually under the control of a single party or faction, recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
can retain the terms 'freedom' and '
democracyDemocracy is a system of government in which either the actual governing is carried out by the people governed , or the power to do so is granted by them...
' and give them its own meaning: and its right to them is not so easily disproved as minds inflamed by passion suppose." In the same book, written before
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he says of J. F. C. Fuller, who worked for the Policy Directorate in the
British Union of FascistsThe British Union of Fascists was a political party in the United Kingdom formed in 1932 by a former Labour government minister and former MP of the Conservative Party, Sir Oswald Mosley.-Background:...
:
Fuller… believes that Britain "must swim with the out-flowing tide of this great political change". From my point of view, General Fuller has as good a title to call himself a "believer in democracy" as anyone else. …I do not think I am unfair to [the report that a ban against married women Civil Servants should be removed because it embodied NazismNazism, known officially in German as National Socialism , is the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Nazi Party or National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.Nazism is often considered...
], in finding the implication that what is Nazi is wrong, and need not be discussed on its own merits.
Protests against
One of the first and most famous protests against Eliot on the subject of anti-Semitism came in the form of a poem from the Anglo-Jewish writer and poet
Emanuel LitvinoffEmanuel Litvinoff is a British writer and human rights campaigner, and is one of the best known and highly regarded figures in Anglo-Jewish literature.-Background:He is known for novels and short stories, and as a poet and playwright...
, at an inaugural poetry reading for the
Institute of Contemporary ArtsThe Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
in 1951. Only a few years after the Holocaust, Eliot had republished lines originally written in the 1920s about 'money in furs' and the 'protozoic slime' of Bleistein's 'lustreless, protrusive eye' in his
Selected Poems of 1948, angering Litvinoff. When the poet got up and announced his poem, entitled 'To T. S. Eliot', the event’s host, Sir
Herbert ReadSir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner.-Early life:He was born in Kirkbymoorside in North...
, declared 'Oh Good, Tom's just come in’. Litvinoff proceeded in evoking to the packed but silent room his work, which ended with the lines "Let your words/tread lightly on this earth of Europe/lest my people's bones protest". Many members of the audience were outraged; Litvinoff said "hell broke loose" and that no one supported him. One listener, the poet
Stephen SpenderSir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
, who was a close friend of Eliot's, stood up and, stating that he was as Jewish as Litvinoff, called the poem an undeserved attack on Eliot. However, Litvinoff says that Eliot was heard to mutter, 'It's a good poem'.
Rebuttals
Leonard WoolfLeonard Sidney Woolf was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, perhaps best known as the widower of author Virginia Woolf.-Life:...
, husband of
Virginia WoolfAdeline Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, epistler, publisher, feminist, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, who was himself Jewish and a friend of Eliot's, judged that Eliot was probably "slightly anti-Semitic in the sort of vague way which is not uncommon. He would have denied it quite genuinely."
In 2003, Professor Ronald Schuchard of
Emory UniversityEmory University is a private research university in the metropolitan area of Atlanta in unincorporated Dekalb County, Georgia. In addition to its three undergraduate divisions, Emory has nine graduate and professional schools, including schools of business, law, medicine, theology, nursing, and...
published details of a previously unknown cache of letters from Eliot to
Horace KallenHorace Meyer Kallen was a Jewish-American philosopher.-Biography:Born in the then German Bernstadt, Silesia to Jacob David Kallen and Esther Rebecca , an Orthodox rabbi and his wife, Kallen came to the United States as a child in 1887...
, which reveal that in the early 1940s Eliot was actively helping Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria to re-settle in Britain and America. In letters written after the war, Eliot also voiced support for modern
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
.
Formal recognition
- Order of Merit (awarded by King George VI
George VI was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions from 11 December 1936 until his death...
(United Kingdom), 1948)
- Nobel Prize for Literature "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry" (Stockholm
' is the capital and largest city of Sweden. It is the site of the national Swedish government, the Riksdag , and the official residence of the Swedish Monarch as well as the prime minister. The Monarch resides at Drottningholm Palace outside of Stockholm since 1980 and uses the Royal Palace of...
, 1948)
- Officier de la Legion d'Honneur
The Légion d'honneur or Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
(1951)
- Hanseatic Goethe Prize
The Hansischer Goethe-Preis is a German literary and artistic award, given biennially since 1949 to a figure of European stature.Past winners include:*2005 Ariane Mnouchkine*2003 Cees Nooteboom*2001 Pina Bausch*1999 Ryszard Kapuściński...
(HamburgHamburg is the second-largest city in Germany and the sixth-largest city in the European Union...
, 1955)
- Dante Medal (Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence...
, 1959)
- Commandeur de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres
The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres is an Order of France, established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture, and confirmed as part of the Ordre National du Mérite by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963...
, (1960)
- Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is a decoration bestowed by the President of the United States and is, along with theequivalent Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress, the highest civilian award in the U.S...
(1964)
- 13 honorary doctorates (including Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, and Harvard)
- Tony Award in 1950 for Best Play: The Broadway production of The Cocktail Party.
- Two posthumous Tony Awards (1983) for his poems used in the musical Cats
Cats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot. It introduced the song standard "Memory."...
- Eliot College
Eliot College is the oldest college of the University of Kent. It was established in 1965, the same year the university opened.-Namesake:The college is named after T. S. Eliot, the poet who died on January 4 1965, the same day the university was formally established...
of the University of KentThe University of Kent is a plate glass campus university in Kent, England.-Name:The university's original name, chosen in 1962, was the University of Kent at Canterbury, reflecting the fact that the campus straddled the boundary between the county borough of Canterbury and Kent County Council...
, England, named after him
- Celebrated on commemorative postage stamps
A commemorative stamp is a postage stamp issued to honor or commemorate a place, event or person. Most postal services of the world issue several of these each year, often holding first day of issue ceremonies at locations connected with the subjects...
- Has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame
The St. Louis Walk of Fame honors well-known people from St. Louis, Missouri who made contributions to culture of the United States. All inductees were either born in the Greater St. Louis area or spent their formative or creative years there...
Poetry
- Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, commonly known as Prufrock, is a poem by the American poet, T.S Eliot, begun in February 1910 and published in Chicago in June 1915. Described as a "drama of literary anguish," it presents a stream of consciousness in the form of a dramatic monologue, and marked...
- Portrait of a Lady (poem)
Portrait of a Lady is a poem by T. S. Eliot, first published in 1915 in Others magazine and then in his 1917 collection of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations....
- Aunt Helen
- Poems (1920)
- Gerontion
Gerontion is a poem by T. S. Eliot that was first published in 1920. The work relates the opinions and impressions of a gerontic, or elderly man through a dramatic monologue which describes Europe after World War I through the eyes of a man who has lived the majority of his life in the 19th Century....
- Sweeney Among the Nightingales
- Hippopotamus"
- "Whispers of Immortality"
- "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service"
- "A Cooking Egg"
- The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434 line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922...
(1922)
- The Hollow Men
The Hollow Men is a major poem by TS Eliot, the Nobel-Prize-winning modernist poet. Its themes are, like many of Eliot's poems, overlapping a fragmentary, but it is recognised to be concerned most with post-War Europe under the Treaty of Versailles , the difficulty of hope and religious...
(1925)
- Ariel Poems
T. S. Eliot's Ariel Poems are those written for Faber and Faber's series of Ariel Poems. All but "Triumphal March" also appear in his book Collected Poems: 1909-1962 under the heading Ariel Poems.-"Journey of the Magi":...
(1927-1954)
- The Journey of the Magi
In the 20th century, T. S. Eliot wrote a poem entitled Journey of the Magi. The poem was written after Eliot's conversion to Christianity and confirmation in the Church of England in 1927 and published in Ariel Poems in 1930....
(1927)
- Ash Wednesday
"Ash Wednesday" is the first long poem written by T. S. Eliot after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism. Published in 1930 , this poem deals with the struggle that ensues when one who has lacked faith in the past strives to move towards God.Sometimes referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem",...
(1930)
- Coriolan (1931)
- Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is a collection of whimsical poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. Its contents are widely known as the basis for the record-setting musical Cats....
(1939)
- The Marching Song of the Pollicle Dogs and Billy M'Caw: The Remarkable Parrot (1939) in The Queen's Book of the Red Cross
The Queen's Book of the Red Cross was published in November 1939 in afundraising effort to aid the Red Cross during World War II.The book was sponsored by Queen Elizabeth, and itscontents were contributed by fifty British authors and artists....
- Four Quartets
Four Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published individually over a six-year period. The first poem, "Burnt Norton", was written and published with a collection of his early works following the production of Eliot's play, Murder in the Cathedral...
(1945)
Plays
- Sweeney Agonistes (published in 1926, first performed in 1934)
- The Rock (1934)
- Murder in the Cathedral
Murder in the Cathedral is a poetic drama by T. S. Eliot that portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, first performed in 1935...
(1935)
- The Family Reunion
The Family Reunion is a play by T. S. Eliot. Written mostly in blank verse, it incorporates elements from Greek drama and mid-twentieth-century detective plays to portray the hero's journey from guilt to redemption. The play was unsuccessful when first presented in 1939, and was later regarded as...
(1939)
- The Cocktail Party
The Cocktail Party is a play by T. S. Eliot. Elements of the play are based on Alcestis, by the Ancient Greek playwright Euripides. The play was the most popular of Eliot's seven plays in his lifetime, although his 1935 play, Murder in the Cathedral, is better remembered today.The Cocktail Party...
(1949)
- The Confidential Clerk
thumb|1st edition cover The Confidential Clerk is a comic verse play by T. S. Eliot.-Synopsis:Sir Claude Mulhammer, a wealthy entrepreneur, decides to smuggle his illegitimate son Colby into the household by employing him as his confidential clerk...
(1953)
- The Elder Statesman
The Elder Statesman is a play in verse by T. S. Eliot first performed in 1958 and published in 1959.-Overview:T. S. Eliot once quipped: “A play should give you something to think about...
(first performed in 1958, published in 1959)
Nonfiction
- The Second-Order Mind (1920)
- Tradition and the Individual Talent
"Tradition and the Individual Talent" is an essay written by poet and literary theorist T. S. Eliot. The essay was first published, in two parts, in "The Egoist" and later in Eliot's first book of criticism, "The Sacred Wood"...
(1920)
- The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920)
- "Hamlet and His Problems
"Hamlet and His Problems" is a 1920 essay by T. S. Eliot which offers a critical reading of Hamlet. Originally published in Eliot's The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, this essay introduced his concept of objective correlative. The essay is also noted for its bold description of Hamlet...
"
- Homage to John Dryden (1924)
- Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca (1928)
- For Lancelot Andrewes (1928)
- Dante (1929)
- Selected Essays, 1917–1932 (1932)
- The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933)
- After Strange Gods (1934)
- Elizabethan Essays (1934)
- Essays Ancient and Modern (1936)
- The Idea of a Christian Society (1940)
- A Choice of Kipling's Verse (1941) made by Eliot, with an essay on Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling was a British author and poet. Born in Bombay, British India, he is best known for his works of fiction The Jungle Book , Kim , many short stories, including The Man Who Would Be King ; and his poems, including...
, London, Faber and Faber.
- Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948)
- Poetry and Drama (1951)
- The Three Voices of Poetry (1954)
- The Frontiers of Criticism
"The Frontiers of Criticism" is a lecture given by T. S. Eliot at the University of Minnesota in 1956. It was reprinted in On Poetry and Poets, a collection of Eliot's critical essays, in 1957...
(1956)
- On Poetry and Poets (1957)
Posthumous publications
- To Criticize the Critic (1965)
- The Waste Land: Facsimile Edition (1974)
- Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917 (1996)
Further reading
- Ackroyd, Peter
Peter Ackroyd CBE is an English novelist and biographer with a particular interest in the history and culture of London.-Childhood and education:...
. T. S. Eliot: A Life. (1984)
- Asher, Kenneth T. S. Eliot and Ideology (1995)
- Brand, Clinton A. "The Voice of This Calling: The Enduring Legacy of T. S. Eliot," Modern Age Volume 45, Number 4; Fall 2003 online edition, conservative perspective
- Bush, Ronald
Ronald George Bush in Auckland. He played one test match for the All Blacks in 1931 and he was also a New Zealand cricketer who played 10 first-class matches for the Auckland Aces in the mid-1930's....
. T. S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Style. (1984)
- Christensen, Karen. "Dear Mrs. Eliot," The Guardian Review. (29 January 2005).
- Crawford, Robert. The Savage and the City in the Work of T. S. Eliot. (1987).
- Dawson, J.L., P.D. Holland & D.J. McKitterick, A Concordance to 'The Complete Poems and Plays of T.S. Eliot'. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1995.
- Gardner, Helen. The Composition of Four Quartets. (1978).
- ---The Art of T. S. Eliot. (1949)
- Hargrove, Nancy Duvall. Landscape as Symbol in the Poetry of T. S. Eliot. University Press of Mississippi (1978).
- ---. T. S. Eliot's Parisian Year. University Press of Florida (2009).
- The Letters of T. S. Eliot. Ed. by Valerie Eliot. Vol. I, 1898-1922. San Diego [etc.] 1988.
- Gordon, Lyndall
Lyndall Gordon is a South African writer and former academic, known for her literary biographies. She was born in Cape Town and was an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, then a doctoral student at Columbia University. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford...
. T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life. (1998)
- Julius, Anthony
Anthony Julius is a prominent British lawyer and academic, best known for his actions on behalf of Diana, Princess of Wales and Deborah Lipstadt...
. T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form. Cambridge University Press (1995)
- Kelleter, Frank. Die Moderne und der Tod: Edgar Allan Poe–T. S. Eliot–Samuel Beckett. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1998.
- Kenner, Hugh
William Hugh Kenner , was a Canadian literary scholar, critic and professor.Kenner was born in Peterborough, Ontario on January 7, 1923; his father taught classics...
. The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot. (1969)
- ---, editor, T. S. Eliot: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall. (1962)
- Kirsch, Adam. "Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...
and T. S. Eliot", The American Scholar. Vol 67, Iss 3. Summer 1998
- Levy, William Turner and Victor Scherle. Affectionately, T. S. Eliot: The Story of a Friendship: 1947-1965. (1968).
- Maxwell, D. E. S. The Poetry of T. S. Eliot, Routledge and Keagan Paul. (1960).
- Matthews, T. S. Great Tom: Notes Towards the Definition of T. S. Eliot. (1973)
- Miller, James E., Jr.
James E. Miller, Jr. is an American scholar and the Helen A. Regenstein Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago, where he completed his graduate work, taught, and served as chairman of the English department....
T. S. Eliot. The Making of an American Poet, 1888-1922. The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2005.
- North, Michael
Michael North is an American literary critic and a professor in the department of English at the University of California, Los Angeles.-Background:North received a B.A. from Stanford University in 1973 and Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut in 1980...
(ed.) The Waste Land (Norton Critical Editions). New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.
- Quillian, William H.
William H. Quillian is an American literary critic and James Joyce scholar. He is currently Professor of English on the Emma B. Kennedy Foundation at Mount Holyoke College.-Background:...
Hamlet and the New Poetic: James Joyce and T. S. EliotHamlet and the New Poetic is a 1983 book of literary criticism on James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and Hamlet by American professor William H. Quillian.-Overview:...
. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press (1983).
- Raine, Craig
Craig Raine is an English poet and critic born in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, England. He is the best-known exponent of Martian poetry.-Life:...
. T. S. Eliot. Oxford University Press (2006).
- Ricks, Christopher
Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University and Co-Director of the Editorial Institute at Boston University, and was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford from 2004 to 2009...
.T. S. Eliot and Prejudice. (1988).
- Robinson, Ian "The English Prophets", The Brynmill Press Ltd (2001)
- Ronnick, Michele Valerie, "Eliot's 'The Hollow Men'", The Explicator. Vol 56, Iss 2. (1998)
- Schuchard, Ronald. Eliot's Dark Angel: Intersections of Life and Art. (1999).
- Seferis, George. "Introduction to T. S. Eliot" in Modernism/modernity
Modernism/Modernity is a peer-reviewed academic journal founded in 1994 by Lawrence Rainey and Robert van Hallberg. Since 2001 it has been the official publication of the ; each September issue presents papers from the annual MSA conference...
16:1 (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modernism-modernity/toc/mod.16.1.html January 2009), 146-60.
- Seymour-Jones, Carole. Painted Shadow: A Life of Vivienne Eliot. (2001).
- Sencourt, Robert. T. S. Eliot: A Memoir. (1971).
- Spender, Stephen
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
. T. S. Eliot. (1975).
- Sinha, Arun Kumar and Vikram, Kumar. T. S. Eliot: An Intensive Study of Selected Poems, Spectrum Books Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi, (2005).
- Tate, Allen
John Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Biography:...
, editor. T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work, First published in 1966 - republished by Penguin 1971.
External links