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.
AR
later wrote that Who is My Neighbour? was of course derivative from Eliot
.
Ridler, Anne. Memoirs. The Perpetua Press, p. 240 pp.
196
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...
Publishing
Anne Ridler
AR
published The Little Book of Modern Verse, with a preface by T. S. Eliot
.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
British Book News. British Council.
(1942): 243
Textual Production
Anne Ridler
AR
's fourth book of poetry was called The Golden Bird, and Other Poems, and included a sonnet written for T. S. Eliot
on his sixtieth birthday.
Backscheider, Paula R., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 27. Gale Research.
27: 300
Friends, Associates
Anne Ridler
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...
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...
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.
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
Leisure and Society
Dorothy L. Sayers
Other speakers in this series included T. S. Eliot
and Lady Rhondda
.
Textual Production
Dorothy L. Sayers
The Friends of Canterbury Cathedral had commissioned T. S. Eliot
's Murder in the Cathedral in 1935.
Brabazon, James. Dorothy L. Sayers. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
