Synopses & Reviews
Volume One: 1898and#8211;1922 presents some 1,400 letters encompassing the years of Eliot's childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, through 1922, by which time the poet had settled in England, married his first wife, and published
The Waste Land. Since the first publication of this volume in 1988, many new materials from British and American sources have come to light. More than two hundred of these newly discovered letters are now included, filling crucial gaps in the record and shedding new light on Eliot's activities in London during and after the First World War.
Volume Two: 1923and#8211;1925 covers the early years of Eliot's editorship of The Criterion, publication of The Hollow Men, and his developing thought about poetry and poetics. The volume offers 1,400 letters, charting Eliot's journey toward conversion to the Anglican faith, as well as his transformation from banker to publisher and his appointment as director of the new publishing house Faber and Gwyer. The prolific and various correspondence of this volume testifies to Eliot's growing influence as cultural commentator and editor.
Review
and#8220;This book will take its place as the standard edition of one of the most important documents of twentieth-century literature in English.and#8221;and#8212;Ronald Bush, Drue Heinz Professor of American Literature, Oxford University
Review
"
The Annotated Waste Land is a nearly indispensable tool for scholars and students alike. With clear, balanced, and well-written scholarship, Lawrence Rainey soothes, with knowledge, our anxiety about approaching Eliotand#8217;s famously difficult poem and allows us much easier access to the poemand#8217;s greatness. I raced through the book, cover to cover, with pleasure and profit, and I will, Iand#8217;m sure, return to it frequently."and#8212;Andrew Hudgins, author of
After the Lost WarReview
"Raineyand#8217;s edition combines impressive scholarship with a readable and expert presentation of the poem and its background. Students will find it invaluableand#8212;and so will their teachers."and#8212;David Chinitz, author of T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide
Review
andldquo;This volume of Eliotandrsquo;s correspondence is prodigious in all things, not least intellect, beauty, personality, and size. . . . The biggest draw, of course, is the poetandrsquo;s extensive correspondence with intellectuals of the time, including Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, Marianne Moore, Virginia Woolf, Robert Graves, Bertrand Russell, and Jean Cocteau.andrdquo;andmdash;Publishers Weekly
Review
andldquo;These chunky tomes of his correspondence allow us to follow day by day, drop by harrowing drop, Eliotandrsquo;s andlsquo;rudely forcedandrsquo; metamorphosis into the poet of hysteria whose sufferings enabled him, like Dostoevsky, to find andlsquo;the entrance to a genuine and personal universe.andrsquo;andrdquo;andmdash;Mark Ford, New York Review of Books
Review
andldquo;The third volume of T.S. Eliotandrsquo;s letters shows the poet and critic in a period of transition . . . The ongoing publication of the letters should be a cause for scholarly celebration . . . [The editor] has done a masterful job, setting the standard for collections of literary letters.andrdquo;andmdash;Matthew Walther,and#160;Washington Times
Review
and#8220;[A] rich and interesting volume . . . reveal[s] with honesty and a striking fragility the emotions and thoughts of a writer who worked long and hard to keep up a persona that was defined by its reticence . . . The letters are a watershed moment . . . they reveal so much.and#8221;and#8212;Craig Woelfel, American Book Review
Review
and#8220;[A] vast treasure house . . . Eliot's letters are like what he once called poetry itself: the highest form of entertainment.and#8221;and#8212;Anthony Brandt
Review
and#8220;[Eliotand#8217;s] success is an improbable and amazing story, and the publication, in two volumes, of his correspondence from 1898 to 1925 . . . lets us watch that story as it was unfolding, day by day, from the inside.and#8221;and#8212;Louis Menand, New Yorker
Review
and#8220;Weirdly gripping . . . one never knows when one might be stopped dead by a letter of singular importance.and#8221;and#8212;James Longenbach, The Nation
Review
and#8220;Better than any biography could, these letters capture the unremitting nature of Eliot's anxieties, without which he would not have written his greatest poems.and#8221;and#8212;Abigail Deutsch, Wall Street Journal
Review
and#8220;[A] retrospective tome of introspective delight . . . Intimate revelations . . . A candid portrait of an artist as a young man.and#8221;and#8212;Publishers Weekly
Review
and#8220;These letters do reveal the anxieties boiled down into The Waste Land. They also show us the graces this browbeaten life possessed.and#8221;and#8212;William Logan, New York Times Book Review
Review
and#8220;[Of] inestimable value . . . long-awaited [and] definitive.and#8221;and#8212;Jeff Simon, Buffalo News
Review
and#8220;In these adroitly annotated volumes, the poetand#8217;s conquest of literary London is brought brilliantly to life.and#8221;and#8212;Edward Short, Weekly Standard
Review
"[A] trove of important correspondence . . . Taken together these volumes reveal the personal, economic, and social exigencies that impacted Eliot and his work and provide new, detailed literary history of Eliot and his age."and#8212;L.L. Johnson, Choice
Review
and#8220;These two absorbing volumes . . . will fascinate every lover of literature, not just poetry.and#8221;and#8212;Benjamin Ivry, San Francisco Chronicle
Review
and#8220;Read[s] as a who's who of literature . . . Eliot's letters poignantly detail triumph, tragedy, and hard-earned mutual respect.and#8221;and#8212;Publishers Weekly
Review
and#8220;New, detailed literary history of Eliot and his age. . . . Essential.and#8221;and#8212;L. L. Johnson, Choice
Review
andldquo;This new volume of letters shows Eliot going through tumultuous challenges and hardships. The letters strengthen our sense of the poetryandrsquo;s authenticity.andrdquo;andmdash;Christopher J. Knight,and#160;Commonweal
Synopsis
This fifth volume of the collected letters of poet, playwright, essayist, and literary critic Thomas Stearns Eliot covers the years 1930 through 1931. It was during this period that the acclaimed American-born writer earnestly embraced his newly avowed Anglo-Catholic faith, a decision that earned him the antagonism of friends like Virginia Woolf and Herbert Read. Also evidenced in these correspondences is Eliot's growing estrangement from his wife Vivien, with the writer's newfound dedication to the Anglican Church exacerbating the unhappiness of an already tormented union.
Yet despite his personal trials, this period was one of great literary activity for Eliot. In 1930 he composed the poems Ash-Wednesday and Marina, and published Coriolan and a translation of Saint-John Perse's Anabase the following year. As director at the British publishing house Faber & Faber and editor of The Criterion, he encouraged W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice, and Ralph Hogdson, published James Joyce's Haveth Childers Everywhere, and turned down a book proposal from Eric Blair, better known by his pen name, George Orwell. Through Eliot's correspondences from this time the reader gets a full-bodied view of a great artist at a personal, professional, and spiritual crossroads.
Synopsis
This fifth volume of the collected letters of Nobel Prizeandndash;winning poet, playwright, essayist, and literary critic T. S. Eliot offers readers a fascinating, full-bodied view of the artist at a personal, professional, and spiritual crossroads. These correspondences, written during a period of great literary activity for The Waste Land author and soon after he dedicated himself in earnest to the Anglo-Catholic faith, reflect Eliotandrsquo;s newfound devotion to the Anglican Church, the continuing deterioration of his marriage to his wife Vivien, and his professional and personal dealings with James Joyce, George Orwell, W. H. Auden, Virginia Woolf, and others.
Synopsis
Newly revised and in paperback for the first time, this definitive, annotated edition of T. S. Eliotand#8217;s
The Waste Land includes as a bonus
all the essays Eliot wrote as he was composing his masterpiece. Enriched with period photographs, a London map of cited locations, groundbreaking information on the origins of the work, and full annotations, the volume is itself a landmark in literary history.
and#147;More than any previous editor, Rainey provides the reader with every resource that might help explain the genesis and significance of the poem. . . . The most imaginative and useful edition of The Waste Land ever published.and#8221;and#151;Adam Kirsch, New Criterion
and#147;For the student or for anyone who wants to get the maximum amount of information out of a foundational modernist work, this is the best available edition.and#8221;and#151;Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
During these years, Eliot secures the future of The Monthly Criterion, corresponds with writers and thinkers from Virginia Woolf to Robert Frost to W. H. Auden, and continues to publish his own poems and writings, all while nursing his wife back to health.
Synopsis
T. S. Eliot writes the letters contained in this volume during a period of weighty responsibilities as husband and increasing demands as editor and publisher. He cultivates the support of prominent guarantors to secure the future of his periodical, The Monthly Criterion, even as he loyally looks after his wife, Vivien, now home after months in a French psychiatric hospital.
Eliot corresponds with writers throughout Great Britain, Europe, and the United States while also forging links with the foremost reviews in London, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, and Milan. He generously promotes many other writers, among them Louis Zukofsky and Edward Dahlberg, and manages to complete a variety of writings himself, including the much-loved poem A Song for Simeon, a brilliant introduction to Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, and many more.
Synopsis
The definitive edition of the most influential poem of the twentieth century
Synopsis
This book presents the new and definitive edition of T. S. Eliotand#8217;s The Waste Land, along with all the essays Eliot wrote as he was composing his masterpiece. Enriched with period photographs, a London map of cited locations, groundbreaking information on the origins of the work, and full annotations, the volume is itself a landmark in literary history.
Synopsis
One of the twentieth centuryand#8217;s most powerfuland#151;and controversialand#151;works,
The Waste Land was
published in the desolate wake of the First World War. This definitive edition of T. S. Eliotand#8217;s masterpiece presents a new and authoritative version of the poem, along with all the essays Eliot wrote as he was composing
The Waste Land,
seven of them never before published in book form. The volume is enriched with period photographs and a London map of locations mentioned in the poem.
Featured in the book are Lawrence Raineyand#8217;s groundbreaking account of how The Waste Land came to be composed; a history of the reactions of admirers and critics; and full annotations to the poem and Eliotand#8217;s essays. The edition transforms our understanding of one of the greatest modernist writers and the magnificent poem that became a landmark in literary history.
Synopsis
In the period covered by this richly detailed collection, T. S. Eliot was to set a new course for his life and work. The demands of his professional life as writer and editor became more complex and exacting. The celebrated but financially pressed periodical he had been editing since 1922and#8212;
The Criterion: A Literary Reviewand#8212;switched between being a quarterly and a monthly; in addition to writing numerous essays and editorials, lectures, reviews, introductions and prefaces, his letters show Eliot involving himself wholeheartedly in the business of his new career as a publisher.
This correspondence with friends and mentors vividly documents all the stages of Eliotand#8217;s personal and artistic transformation during these crucial years, the continuing anxieties of his private life, and the forging of his public reputation.
Synopsis
In two highly anticipated volumes, the correspondence of the twentieth century's eminent man of letters, from youth to early manhood
About the Author
Valerie Eliot, nand#233;e Esmand#233; Valerie Fletcher, is the widow and literary executor of the Nobel Prizeand#8211;winning poet T. S. Eliot. She became Eliot's second wife in 1957, and their marriage continued until his death in 1965. In addition to editing the first two volumes of the poet's letters, she has edited T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land, a Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts. She lives in London. Hugh Haughton is professor of English at the University of York, and author of The Poetry of Derek Mahon.