Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
T. S. Eliot
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Standard Name: Eliot, T. S.
Used Form: Thomas Stearns Eliot
TSE
, an American settled in England, was the dominant voice in English poetry during the first half of the twentieth century, as well as an immensely influential critic. His early experimental poems excel at catching an atmosphere or mood, often a moment of stasis and self-doubt. The Waste Land, a brilliant collage of fragments, has been seen to express the fears of a whole society about the threatened end of culture and amenity called civilization. After Eliot's conversion to Christianity his poetry moved to sombre investigations of the spiritual life: of time, fate, decision, guilt, and reconciliation. Meanwhile his criticism grappled with the the relation of past to present in terms of the contemporary relationship to tradition. TSE
also wrote lively comic verse, and in theatrical writing he moved on from pageant and historical religious drama to symbolic representation of spiritual issues through events in banal daily life.
EU
and her husband led active social lives, often entertaining friends and colleagues at their home. Blanche Alethea Crackanthorpe
introduced her to Marie Belloc Lowndes
, who became a friend of Underhill and called her...
Intertextuality and Influence
Michelene Wandor
It proclaims: this is the story of two people // this is the story of two peoples // and one God / your God or mine?
Wandor, Michelene. The Music of the Prophets. Arc Publications.
34
In tracing the story to before the Act...
Intertextuality and Influence
Evelyn Waugh
In this novel titled from T. S. Eliot
's The Waste Land, Waugh traces Tony Last, like others of his protagonists, from materially and socially comfortable but spiritually arid life in England, out...
Friends, Associates
Harriet Shaw Weaver
As editor, HSW
attempted to recruit Storm Jameson
for the paper, but Jameson unhappily could not accept a full-time position. She also began to acquaint herself with contributors, such as H. D.
, whom she...
Occupation
Harriet Shaw Weaver
The Egoist Press
went on to publish Dora Marsden's The Definition of the Godhead, Eliot
's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Pound
's Dialogues of Fontenelle, Lewis
's Tarr,...
Occupation
Harriet Shaw Weaver
The relevant clause in his will states: I leave all my manuscripts to Harriet Shaw Weaver and direct that she have sole decision in all literary matters relating to my writings published and unpublished.
Lidderdale, Jane, and Mary Nicholson. Dear Miss Weaver. Viking.
305
Friends, Associates
Harriet Shaw Weaver
Her friendship with Dora Marsden
remained constant until Marsden's mental health deteriorated. Marsden was one of the few people who knew and addressed HSW
by her pseudonym, Josephine Wright. After Weaver closed down the...
Literary responses
Harriet Shaw Weaver
In 1932Eliot
dedicated his Selected Essays to HSW
: in gratitude and in recognition of her services to English letters.
Lidderdale, Jane, and Mary Nicholson. Dear Miss Weaver. Viking.
Wellesley, Dorothy. Far Have I Travelled. James Barrie.
133
In the years after the war she formed her important...
Family and Intimate relationships
Mary Wesley
In wartime London in 1944 she met journalist, linguist, and playwright Eric Siepmann
.
Wright, Daphne. “Mary Wesley”. Guardian Weekly.
19
Marnham, Patrick. Wild Mary: the Life of Mary Wesley. Chatto and Windus.
127
While they dined in the same restaurant, but not together, he sent her a series of increasingly drunken notes...
Textual Features
Rebecca West
In the letters West describes her own writing in contradistinction to that of high modernists. She told the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, Arthur Crook
, in a letter of 24 December 1973:...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Jeanette Winterson
In these essays JW
defends the power and importance of art, and the necessity of difficult art, discusses the works of Virginia Woolf
, T. S. Eliot
, and Gertrude Stein
, and explores her...
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
Leonard Woolf wrote to Eliot, whose Prufrock and Other Observations he had read, to invite him to send some work to the Hogarth Press
. The letter led to a meeting, and ultimately to the...
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
Harriet Shaw Weaver
had approached the Hogarth Press
about publishing Ulysses in April 1918, but the Woolfs declined, mainly because they could not have printed so massive a work themselves and because Leonard could find...
