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.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
, a family friend, wrote a warm review for the American Journal Examiner, translating the title as With Tapers Quenched, and concluding: Success to you, young singer in Venice!The...
Literary responses
A. E. Housman
At AEH
's death Virginia Woolf
wrote that although she had personal reservations about his muse—Always too laden with a peculiar scent for my taste. May, death, lads, Shropshire—
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
6: 33
he had...
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
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.
Nadel, Ira Bruce, editor. “Chronology; Introduction”. The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, Cambridge University Press, pp. xvii - xxxi; 1.
5
The same year Eliot
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.
3: 58n1, 46
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...
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...
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
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.
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, pp. 19-24.
21
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
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...
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.
371-3
Its political interests were served by enlightened...
Occupation
Margaret Haig, Viscountess Rhondda
By 1930, Kingsley Martin
, editor of New Statesman and Nation, noted that Time and Tide was one of the leading British weeklies. It was read by the leaders of the country, including Prime...