Synopses & Reviews
Each facsimile page of the original manuscript is accompanied here by a typeset transcript on the facing page. This book shows how the original, which was much longer than the first published version, was edited through handwritten notes by Ezra Pound, by Eliots first wife, and by Eliot himself. Edited and with an Introduction by Valerie Eliot; Preface by Ezra Pound.
Review
"We sometimes hear it said of an iconoclastic essayist like Mark Twain or Russell Baker that he is a 'national treasure.' I vote to include Barbara Holland in this treasure chest."-The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Though Holland obviously means what she writes, she also is having good fun, not merely mourning and celebrating what has been lost but also taking well-aimed whacks at inviting targets."-The Washington Post
Synopsis
When the New York Public Library announced in October 1968 that its Berg Collection had acquired the original manuscript of The Waste Land, one of the puzzling mysteries of twentieth-century literature was solved. The manuscript was not lost, as had been believed, but has remained among the papers of John Quinn, Eliot's friend and adviser, who had received it from the poet in 1922. If the discovery of the manuscript was startling, its content was even more so, because the published version of The Waste Land was considerably shorter than the original.
About the Author
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, and became a British subject in 1927. The acclaimed poet of The Waste Land, Four Quartets, and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, among numerous other poems, prose, and works of drama, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. T.S. Eliot died in 1965 in London, England, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.