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.
Her brother was working for publishers George Bell
, and she met a number of authors, including Antonia White
and Margaret Kennedy
. Later, through her own work, she met with T. S. Eliot
's...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anne Ridler
AR
wrote that the two great influences on her as a poet (because they helped her to find her own voice) were Sir Thomas Wyatt
and W. H. Auden
. Eliot
, too, was inescapable...
Literary responses
Anne Ridler
When Anne Bradby (later AR
) plucked up courage to show some early poems to T. S. Eliot
(though not requesting publication by Faber and Faber
), she was encouraged by his advice: I should...
Textual Features
Anne Ridler
Her introduction to the first selection, she said later, was more influenced by Coleridge
than by Charles Williams
.
Ridler, Anne. Memoirs. The Perpetua Press, p. 240 pp.
96
It was an important feature of the volume, ranging itself alongside such prestigious Shakespeare critics...
Material Conditions of Writing
Anne Ridler
Ambiguity in English Verse Rhythms in this volume was the only result of a projected book on metrics which T. S. Eliot
had suggested, and which AR
had worked on during the second world war...
Occupation
Naomi Royde-Smith
By February 1923 NRS
was either literary editor on The Nation or still a candidate for the position: Virginia Woolf
was trying to unseat her, in order to pull wires and establish T. S. Eliot
Material Conditions of Writing
Naomi Royde-Smith
NRS
began her literary career with reviewing, and continued to contribute to periodicals. At one time she was art critic for The Queen. During the Second World War she reviewed almost weekly for the...
Education
Bernice Rubens
At university, she was President of both the student Music and Socialist societies, as well as a member of the Students' Union Council.
Gilbert, Sarah. “Bernice Rubens”. Cardiff University Magazine, Vol.
1
, No. 1.
BR
later found that her education slowed her development as a writer...
This text was somewhat controversial: she noted, for instance, that T. S. Eliot
was shocked by her statement that [a]nimals we are and animals we remain, and the path to our regeneration, if there be...
Textual Features
Vita Sackville-West
Here VSW
mentioned her dissatisfaction with the pessimism of T. S. Eliot
and the self-advertising of the Sitwells
, and voiced the hope for a poetry capable of seriousness and noble thoughts.
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin.
168
Textual Production
Vita Sackville-West
VSW
followed her Behn biography two years later with Andrew Marvell, to open Faber and Faber
's series The Poets on the Poets (in which the second volume was provided by Eliot
writing on Dante
).
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin.
222
Intertextuality and Influence
Vita Sackville-West
It has an introspective strain, owed partly to its genesis in war: The rabble in the basement of our being, / Ragged and gaunt, that seldom rush to light.
