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.
Jarrett-Macauley, Delia. The Life of Una Marson, 1905-65. Manchester University Press.
157-8
Textual Production
Una Marson
Marson initially approached T. S. Eliot
to write the preface, but he refused, so she turned to L. A. G. Strong
, a British writer and a colleague at the BBC
. She dedicated the...
Literary responses
Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke
When most women writers of her age were forgotten, the Countess of Pembroke retained a niche in literary history as a partner in the Sidneian psalms as well as the dedicatee of the Arcadia....
Intertextuality and Influence
Charlotte Mew
Critic John Newton
has recently noted some intriguing parallels between CM
and T. S. Eliot
which suggest that some of Eliot's best-known lines from The Waste Land may have been influenced by Mew. He notes...
Friends, Associates
Susan Miles
During her years at Bloomsbury, UR met the many distinguished literary figures who were either parishioners or readers at fund-raising events, like T. S. Eliot
, John Middleton Murry
, Edith Sitwell
, Wilfrid Meynell
Literary responses
Susan Miles
This book appeared with very distinguished endorsement on its jacket. T. S. Eliot
wrote that he found it a very poignant story.Storm Jameson
wrote, Its simplicities are at a profound level. The theme is...
Literary responses
Edna St Vincent Millay
Edmund Wilson
disliked this work, apparently because the communist in it is just as ridiculous as the stockbroker, so that no authoritative, authorized, left-wing voice is supplied.
Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House.
406
But its success was stunning.
Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House.
405
Textual Production
Edna St Vincent Millay
The Cult of the Occult was a group of poems which ESVM
wrote as a satire on T. S. Eliot
's The Waste Land.
Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House.
493-4
Textual Features
Betty Miller
Modernist in style, the book is divided into four sections: Breakfast Time, Lunch Time, Tea Time, and Dinner Time. Though these titles are uncompromisingly human-centric, the London house in Westbourne Grove...
Friends, Associates
Hope Mirrlees
T. S. Eliot
became a paying guest of HM
, her mother
, and her aunt
at their home in Surrey. He stayed here intermittently for several years, though he was usually in London...
Textual Production
Hope Mirrlees
HM
published A Fly in Amber: Being an Extravagant Biography of the Romantic Antiquary Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. It was published through Faber and Faber
, who obtained it through HM
's old friend T. S. Eliot
.
Henig, Suzanne. “Queen of Lud: Hope Mirrlees”. Virginia Woolf Quarterly, Vol.
HM
observed that Paris was deeply influenced by Cocteau
's poem Le Cape de Bonne Espérance. It also is replete with literary and other allusions apart from Cocteau.
Henig, Suzanne. “Queen of Lud: Hope Mirrlees”. Virginia Woolf Quarterly, Vol.
1
, No. 1, pp. 8-27.
13
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Though it is frequently read...
Literary responses
Hope Mirrlees
Paris was received by an appreciative audience. Before its publication Virginia Woolf
described it as very obscure, indecent, and brilliant.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
2: 385
As Julia Briggs
observes, its readership remained strictly limited; [but] those, like T. S. Eliot
Textual Production
Marianne Moore
MM
published her Selected Poems, with an introduction by T. S. Eliot
, who also suggested the order of the poems printed here.
Abbott, Craig S. Marianne Moore: A Descriptive Bibliography. University of Pittsburgh Press.
14-16
Moore, Marianne. “Introduction”. The Poems of Marianne Moore, edited by Grace Schulman, Faber, p. xix - xxx.
