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.
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....
Literary responses
Dorothy L. Sayers
Within Sayers's lifetime she had become a figure of controversy on account of the element of Christian partisanship in her non-fictional works. In The Emperor's Clothes, 1953, Kathleen Nott
bracketed Sayers with T. S. Eliot
Literary responses
Vernon Lee
Lee's work had a highly mixed reception. It was praised by Pater: in a footnote added to the third edition of his Renaissance, he calls Euphoriona work abounding in knowledge and insights on...
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
VW
wrote to Ethel Smyth
that the stories were diversions or treats I allowed myself when I had done my exercise in the conventional style.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
4: 231
An Unwritten Novel, she said, showed her...
Material Conditions of Writing
Virginia Woolf
VW
published in T. S. Eliot
's newly-renamed The New Criterion her essay On Being Ill, which she had written the previous autumn while she was indeed ill.
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press, 1977–1984, 5 vols.
3: 58n1, 46
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...
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
P. L. Travers
Her friend Æ
introduced her to the editor of this journal, A. R. Orage
. She also served as a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee, of which T. S. Eliot
too was a member.
Demers, Patricia. P.L. Travers. Twayne, 1991.
31
Haggarty, Ben. “Refining Nectar”. A Lively Oracle: A Centennial Celebration of P.L. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins, edited by Ellen Dooling Draper and Jenny Koralek, Published for the Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation by Larson Publications, 1999, pp. 19-24.
21
Occupation
Algernon Charles Swinburne
ACS
is a major Victorian poet and a prominent member of the aesthetic movement (also known as art for art's sake) who enjoyed great popularity and influence. In several ways (his exploration of sexuality...
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
Occupation
Natalie Clifford Barney
Their goal was to offer financial backing to struggling writers such as T. S. Eliot
and Paul Valéry
, but the venture failed because Eliot was too embarrassed to accept the money, and Valéry secured...
Occupation
Ezra Pound
In the spring of 1922, he and Barney began a short-lived project called Bel Esprit in an attempt to raise funds for struggling writers such as T. S. Eliot
(who ultimately refused their help).
Occupation
John Donne
During the later seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries Donne's writings were largely forgotten or disapproved of. In June 1741 the London Magazine printed a regularised (to modern eyes butchered) version of Goe, and catche a...
Occupation
Virginia Woolf
The Press, which began as therapy and for the purpose of publishing the works of its owners, grew into a major engine of modern culture and thought.
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Chatto and Windus, 1996.
371-3
Its political interests were served by enlightened...
