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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Virginia Woolf
VW continued to write personal essays on a range of subjects, some weighty, some witty, but her literary and critical essays are the centre of her work in this genre. In these she wrote about...
Textual Production Virginia Woolf
The article formed the basis
Hussey, Mark. Virginia Woolf A to Z. Facts on File.
168
of a paper titled Character in Fiction that VW read to the Heretics Society in Cambridge on 18 May 1924. The paper was published, as Character in Fiction...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Virginia Woolf
Character in Fiction, the further essay which emerged from Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown, is reflective, philosophical, fictional, its tone assertive, witty, ironical, and serious. It ranges
Woolf, Virginia. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Editors McNeillie, Andrew and Stuart Nelson Clarke, Hogarth Press.
3: 421
living writers into two...
Textual Production Virginia Woolf
The press issued this little book on the same day as Eliot 's Poems and John Middleton Murry 's The Critic in Judgment.
Literary responses Virginia Woolf
VW wrote to Ethel Smyth that the stories were diversions or treats I allowed myself when I had done my exercise in the conventional style.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
4: 231
An Unwritten Novel, she said, showed her...
Friends, Associates Virginia Woolf
T. S. Eliot visited VW for the first time, thereby beginning a lasting association.
Bishop, Edward. A Virginia Woolf Chronology. Macmillan.
47
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press.
1: 218-19
Literary responses Virginia Woolf
As a manifesto for modernism, Jacob's Room divided the critics. T. S. Eliot wrote in a letter that VW had now succeeded in freeing her original gift from compromise with the traditional novel.
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Chatto and Windus.
444
Arnold Bennett
Friends, Associates Virginia Woolf
T. S. Eliot visited VW and read The Waste Land to her from manuscript. She recorded in her diary her early impressions of the poem, which the Hogarth Press published for the first time in...
Intertextuality and Influence Virginia Woolf
Yet, though her voice (and her social and political views) were and would remain quite different from theirs, she was keenly attentive to the works of male contemporaries who were, like her, working to create...
Material Conditions of Writing Virginia Woolf
VW published in T. S. Eliot 's newly-renamed The New Criterion her essay On Being Ill, which she had written the previous autumn while she was indeed ill.
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press.
3: 58n1, 46
Publishing Virginia Woolf
VW published in The Dial her short story Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street, after Eliot had declined to take it for The Criterion.
Briggs, Julia. Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life. Allen Lane.
130n3
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Chatto and Windus.
444-5
Friends, Associates Virginia Woolf
Early members of what VW called Old Bloomsbury (to distinguish the original members of the group from later additions) included Virginia and Vanessa Stephen , Leonard Woolf , Clive Bell , E. M. Forster ,...
Occupation Virginia Woolf
The Press, which began as therapy and for the purpose of publishing the works of its owners, grew into a major engine of modern culture and thought.
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Chatto and Windus.
371-3
Its political interests were served by enlightened...
Friends, Associates Virginia Woolf
They developed a relationship that was competitive yet sustaining and essential to both. In August 1920 Woolf commented on Mansfield in her diary: a woman caring as I care for writing is rare enough I...
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...

Timeline

1899: Arthur Symons published The Symbolist Movement...

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1899

Arthur Symons published The Symbolist Movement in Literature, with an epigraph from Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle .

1 January 1913: Harold Monro opened the Poetry Bookshop at...

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1 January 1913

Harold Monro opened the Poetry Bookshop at 35 Devonshire Street (now Boswell Street) in Bloomsbury.

20 July 1915: The second and final issue of Wyndham Lewis's...

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20 July 1915

The second and final issue of Wyndham Lewis 's Vorticist magazine, Blast, included artwork and literary pieces by Helen Saunders , Jessie Dismorr , and Dorothy Shakespear , along with poems by Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot .

December 1919: The last issue of The Egoist: An Individualist...

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December 1919

The last issue of The Egoist: An Individualist Review was published.

10 April 1925: US author F. Scott Fitzgerald published his...

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10 April 1925

US author F. Scott Fitzgerald published his novelThe Great Gatsby, which probes the consequences of success in the competitive pursuit of the great American dream. Zelda Fitzgerald came up with the title for...

After February 1932: An appeal of Count Potocki of Montalk's case...

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After February 1932

An appeal of Count Potocki of Montalk 's case was heard; and although he was not cleared, an advance in obscene libel cases was made.

Early 1936: The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by...

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Early 1936

The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by Michael Roberts (who was put forward for this task by T. S. Eliot ), set out to define the modern movement, not just chronologically but according...

1953: The Poetry Book Society was founded, largely...

Writing climate item

1953

The Poetry Book Society was founded, largely through the efforts of T. S. Eliot , to promote the reading of poetry.

Texts

Eliot, T. S. “Apology for the Countess of Pembroke”. The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, Faber and Faber, pp. 37-52.
Eliot, T. S. Collected Poems 1909-1962. Faber and Faber, 1968.
Eliot, T. S. Collected poems, 1909-1935. Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1936.
Eliot, T. S. Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry. Alfred A. Knopf.
Eliot, T. S. For Lancelot Andrewes. Faber and Gwyer, 1928.
Eliot, T. S. Four Quartets. Harcourt, Brace.
Eliot, T. S., and Djuna Barnes. “Introduction”. Nightwood, Faber and Faber, 1950.
Eliot, T. S. Journey of the Magi. Faber and Gwyer.
Eliot, T. S. Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F.H. Bradley. Faber and Faber.
Eliot, T. S., and T. S. Eliot. “La chanson d’amour de J. Alfred Prufrock”. Le Navire d’argent, translated by. Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, Maison des amis des livres.
Eliot, T. S. Murder in the Cathedral. Faber and Faber, 1936.
Eliot, T. S. Notes Towards the Definition of Culture. Faber and Faber.
Eliot, T. S. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Faber and Faber.
Eliot, T. S. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Faber and Faber, 1943.
Woolf, Virginia. “On Being Ill”. The New Criterion, edited by T. S. Eliot, Vol.
4
, No. 1, pp. 32-45.
Eliot, T. S. On Poetry and Poets. Faber and Faber, 1957.
Eliot, T. S. Poems. Hogarth Press.
Eliot, T. S. Poems, 1909-1925. Faber and Gwyer.
Eliot, T. S. Prufrock and Other Observations. Egoist.
Eliot, T. S. Selected Essays, 1917-1932. Faber and Faber.
Moore, Marianne, and T. S. Eliot. Selected Poems. Macmillan, 1935.
Eliot, T. S. Selected Prose. Editor Hayward, John Davy, Penguin, 1963.
Eliot, T. S. Sweeney Agonistes. Faber and Faber.
Eliot, T. S. The Cocktail Party. Faber and Faber, 1950.
Eliot, T. S. The Confidential Clerk. Faber and Faber, 1954.