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.
MM
corresponded with T. S. Eliot
from 1921 until the year before his death. She was a friend of H. D.
and of Bryher
, and her editors believe that every one of her five...
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.
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.
Her brother wrote of The...
Textual Production
Marianne Moore
In the early 1920s MM
was already an influential New York reviewer, who covered such landmark texts as T. S. Eliot
's The Sacred Wood, 1921, Bryher
's first novel, Development, also in...
Textual Production
Marianne Moore
White argues that Moore was essentially two separate poets, pre- and post-World War Two. She chooses to present the earlier one of the two, the poet whom Eliot
, Stevens
, Williams
, and Bishop
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.
The first novel which IM
offered to a publisher was read by T. S. Eliot
for Faber and Faber
; he rejected it, perhaps on grounds of the wartime paper shortage.
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins.
170
Author summary
Kathleen Nott
KN
was a philosophical writer, novelist, translator, poet, and critic of the mid twentieth century. Her importance for literary history lies in the position she took up in The Emperor's Clothes, 1953, which challenged...
Intertextuality and Influence
Kathleen Nott
Here KN
writes a lively style, with ingenious images and examples, paradoxes like giving a name a bad dog (by which she means taking a concept like Liberalism or Science and using it pejoratively),
Nott, Kathleen. The Emperor’s Clothes. Heinemann.
43
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Edna O'Brien
EOB
's imaginative development was nourished by her wide reading, and consideration of a number of writers helped to shape her own style and vision. She has said in (April 2002) that one learns the...
Textual Production
Flannery O'Connor
As the thesis for her Master of Fine Arts degree, FOC
submitted a collection of six pieces: The Geranium: A Collection of Short Stories, dedicated to Paul Engle
. Its title is one of...
Publishing
George Orwell
GO
completed his well-known satirical fable, Animal Farm, which was rejected for publication by Gollancz
, Cape
, Collins
, and Faber
(in the person of T. S. Eliot
).
Meyers, Jeffrey. A Reader’s Guide to George Orwell. Littlefield, Adams.
41
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
