Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
T. S. Eliot
-
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.
After her move to England, Ezra Pound
introduced HD to his circle of friends, many of whom were important figures in the modernist movement. They included W. B. Yeats
, T. S. Eliot
,...
Textual Production
H. D.
Even when she had entirely taken over her husband's editorial position, his name continued to appear as editor on the journal's masthead until June 1917 (which was when she too left the journal, handing her...
Literary responses
H. D.
T. S. Eliot
wrote that HD's versions of these choruses were allowing for errors and even occasional omissions of difficult passages, much nearer to both Greek and English than those of the then renowned scholar...
Textual Features
H. D.
This is war poetry which looks at the home front, like T. S. Eliot
's Four Quartets and Ezra Pound
's Pisan Cantos. It has been classified as epic.
Friedman, Susan Stanford. “’Remembering Shakespeare Always, But Remembering Him Differently’: H.D.’s By Avon River”. Sagetrieb, Vol.
2
, No. 2, pp. 45-70.
45
London under the bombing...
Literary responses
Radclyffe Hall
A number of writers rallied in support of RH
. E. M. Forster
and Leonard Woolf
drafted a letter protesting the suppression of The Well of Loneliness. Its signatories included Bernard Shaw
, T. S. Eliot
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Ellen Harrison
JEH
's work exerted a palpable influence on the Modernist movement in literature, and both her persona and her life's work were represented, sometimes in much modified form, in many creative texts. Critic Julia Briggs
Textual Features
Seamus Heaney
Setting out to enable his readers to witness the spectacle of a gifted writer becoming a definitive one, he begins by considering poetic theories of sound and meaning held by Frost
, Eliot
, and...
Textual Production
Seamus Heaney
Sweeney was a legendary king of Ireland who ran mad and was transformed into a bird. He is famous for his poetry and his madness. In literary terms he calls to mind the Irish writer...
Friends, Associates
Susan Hill
While studying at King's CollegeSH
, an aspiring writer, wrote to novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson
and her writer husband C. P. Snow
for advice on the profession. The couple answered her letters and even...
At AEH
's death Virginia Woolf
wrote that although she had personal reservations about his muse—Always too laden with a peculiar scent for my taste. May, death, lads, Shropshire—
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
6: 33
he had...
Friends, Associates
Aldous Huxley
Those friends of Aldous whom his wife Maria referred to as the brilliant ones,
and found intimidatingly intellectual, included T. S. Eliot
, Osbert
, Edith
, and Sacheverell Sitwell
, various members...
Textual Production
P. D. James
PDJ
returned to detective novels with The Skull beneath the Skin, bringing back her female detective Cordelia Gray after a nine-year absence.
The title comes from the second line of Eliot
's disturbing Whispers...
Textual Production
Storm Jameson
Jameson had been approached by the Ministry of Information
once the USA had entered World War II, for suggestions on how to cement Anglo-American relations.
Jameson, Storm. Journey from the North. Harper and Row.
The play opened in Cambridge because the Royal Court
, despite their earlier supportiveness, wanted to test the waters before staging another Jellicoe play in London. AJ
credits John Osborne
for persuading them to produce...
