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
Characters May Sinclair
According to biographer Suzanne Raitt , MS sometimes used aspects of her own experience in her stories. The Pin-Prick, 1915, about a young woman so sensitive that she kills herself in response to a...
death Lady Ottoline Morrell
Before her death LOM named three literary executors, including her friend Hope Mirrlees . Her literary estate consisted primarily of letters, journals, and her drafted memoirs.
Seymour, Miranda. Ottoline Morrell: Life on the Grand Scale. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1992.
7
Obituaries by Virginia Woolf and Margot Asquith were...
Education Edna O'Brien
O'Brien meanwhile cultivated her passion for reading and writing. The first book she purchased was Introducing James Joyce, edited by T. S. Eliot : this volume, she notes, made me realize that I wanted...
Education Penelope Shuttle
At seventeen, she says (after the successive discoveries of Charlotte Brontë , T. S. Eliot and Emily Dickinson ), she began reading Rilke . Everything opened up then, a whole new world of poetry for me.
Mslexia. Mslexia Publications.
47
Education Nan Shepherd
After attending Cults Primary School, followed by Aberdeen High School for Girls , NS received her MA (a first degree in Scotland) in 1915 from the University of Aberdeen . Her studies in English laid...
Education Ruth Fainlight
At school she adored reading Milton , and used to walk around chanting Eliot to myself: Every streetlamp that I pass beats like a fatalistic drum. from hisRhapsody on a Windy Night.
Evans-Bush, Katy. “The Poet Realized. An Interview with Ruth Fainlight”. Contemporary Poetry Review, 2008.
But...
Education Adrienne Rich
Here she was introduced to the poetry of Donne , Yeats , Eliot , Pound , Frost , Thomas , MacNeice , Stevens , and Ginsberg .
Yorke, Liz. Adrienne Rich: Passion, Politics, and the Body. Sage, 1997.
7
Rich enjoyed her time at Radcliffe, though...
Education Elaine Feinstein
She later felt she was lucky to be a postwar student; before then, she would have been as out of place at Newnham as Amy Levy . Christianity was everywhere
Feinstein, Elaine. It Goes with the Territory. Alma, 2013.
37
in the syllabus and...
Education Diana Athill
DA was taught at home by governesses (seven successively before she was sent to school), who followed a correspondence course designed for home schooling which was known as Parents Educational National Union . A French...
Education Harold Pinter
Books borrowed from Hackney Public Library were also important to HP 's education: the moderns (Woolf , Lawrence , Hemingway , Eliot ), and also Dostoyevsky .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Education Margaret Atwood
From 1957 she attended Victoria College , University of Toronto . Canadian publishing and the arts in Canada, broadly considered, had not yet recovered from the second world war. There were no cheap reprints of...
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...
Employer Anne Ridler
AR worked at Faber & Faber as secretary and copy-editor, first for Richard de la Mare and from late 1936 for T. S. Eliot . Her duties included helping Eliot select poetry for The Criterion...
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, 1 Jan. 2003.
19
Marnham, Patrick. Wild Mary: the Life of Mary Wesley. Chatto and Windus, 2006.
127
While they dined in the same restaurant, but not together, he sent her a series of increasingly drunken notes...
Family and Intimate relationships Q. D. Leavis
Though both husband and wife were to influential, F. R. Leavis became one of the leading literary critics of the twentieth century. A dynamic speaker and teacher, he was known for his uncompromising, exclusive, often...

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 .
Clements, Patricia. Baudelaire and the English Tradition. Princeton University Press, 1985.

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

Writing climate item

1 January 1913

Harold Monro opened the Poetry Bookshop at 35 Devonshire Street (now Boswell Street) in Bloomsbury.
Fitzgerald, Penelope. Charlotte Mew and Her Friends. Collins, 1984, p. 240 pp.
142-9
Grant, Joy. Harold Monro and the Poetry Bookshop. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967.
60, 81-3

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

Writing climate item

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 .
Wees, William C. Vorticism and the English Avant-Garde. University of Toronto Press, 1972.
214-15

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

Writing climate item

December 1919

The last issue of The Egoist: An Individualist Review was published.
Sullivan, Alvin, editor. British Literary Magazines: The Modern Age, 1914-1984. Vol. 4, Greenwood Press, 1986.
145
Marsden, Dora, and Harriet Shaw Weaver, editors. The Egoist. Reprint ed., Kraus, 6 vols.
December 1919

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

Writing climate item

10 April 1925

US author F. Scott Fitzgerald published his novel The 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...

Writing climate item

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.
Craig, Alec. The Banned Books of England and Other Countries. George Allen and Unwin, 1962.
89-90

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

Writing climate item

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.
Encyclopædia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/.

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. Ara Vos Prec. Ovid Press.
Eliot, T. S. Ash-Wednesday. Faber and Faber.
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, 1925.
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. Illustrated edition, second impression, 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.