Fitch, Noel Riley. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. W. W. Norton, 1983.
364-5
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.
Connections
| Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| Leisure and Society | Sylvia Beach | T. S. Eliot
made a special appearance at SB
's Shakespeare and Company
to read The Waste Land and Burnt Norton to Les Amis de Shakespeare and Company
. |
| Literary responses | Ezra Pound | Monroe
later added, I can't pretend to be much pleased at the course his verse is taking. A hint from Browning
at his most recondite, and erudition in seventeen languages. qtd. in Nadel, Ira Bruce, editor. “Chronology; Introduction”. The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. xvii - xxxi; 1. 5 |
| 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, 1975–1980, 6 vols. 2: 385 |
| Literary responses | William Empson | The book was a resounding success, widely recommended by T. S. Eliot
in Britain and by John Crowe Ransom
in the USA. Kermode, Frank. “The Savage Life”. London Review of Books, 19 May 2005, pp. 3-5. 3 |
| Literary responses | Jo Shapcott | John Kinsella
's initial review called JS
as a great satirist and a virtuoso in meaning and verse movement, one who is doing no less than rewriting the English poetic canon—challenging sources, verse structure and... |
| Literary responses | Jean Rhys | Critically, Rhys has been lauded as a modernist writer, a feminist writer, and, more recently, a postcolonial, Caribbean, or Creole writer. Biographer Carole Angier suggests that her preoccupation with exile was common in her time... |
| Literary responses | Wendy Cope | Reviewer Andrew O'Hagan
, however, applies a withering pen to WC
in a tirade about a general style of anthology which is, he says, frivolous or aimed at the lifestyle or selfhelp markets. His complaint... |
| Literary responses | Muriel Spark | This notice struck Eliotas one of the two or three most intelligent reviews qtd. in Spark, Muriel. Curriculum Vitae: Autobiography. Constable, 1992. 203 |
| Literary responses | Virginia Woolf | Though he had accepted it for publication, Eliot
had initially expressed little enthusiasm for this essay. Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press, 1977–1984, 5 vols. 3: 49 |
| Literary responses | Harriet Shaw Weaver | In 1932Eliot
dedicated his Selected Essays to HSW
: in gratitude and in recognition of her services to English letters. qtd. in Lidderdale, Jane, and Mary Nicholson. Dear Miss Weaver. Viking, 1970. 314n |
| Literary responses | Marianne Moore | Eliot
assessed her in his introduction as the greatest living master of light rhyme, and as one of those few who have done the language some service in my lifetime. qtd. in Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990. |
| 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... |
| Literary responses | Q. D. Leavis | Fiction and the Reading Public was widely reviewed. In the Criterion of July 1932, T. S. Eliot
commended its argument: A society which does not recognize the existence of art is barbaric. But a society... |
| Literary responses | Muriel Spark | The London theatre critics were scathing, with only two exceptions (though one of these, Harold Hobson
, carried a lot of weight). Pamela Hansford Johnson
trounced the play on the BBC
's radio programme 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.... |
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