The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 Read Free

and Virginia Woolf, as well as a wider cast of acquaintances and contacts. A few of the letters are straightforward arrangements to meet, but they help document Eliot’s London life during the years when he was establishing himself as an intellectual presence and writing some of his greatest poems; and they add valuable information about the publication of his work, particularly that of Ara Vos Prec with John Rodker’s Ovid Press in 1920, and The Waste Land in periodical and volume form in 1922. The cards and letters written during the gestation of The Waste Land from early 1921 to the end of 1922, though often brief and telegrammatic, are of enormous intrinsic importance, and they dramatise a crucial moment.
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    One of the strengths of the 1988 edition of Volume 1 came from Valerie Eliot’s decision to include voices other than the poet’s own, and in particular those of his family. The thirty-eight letters from Vivien Eliot are now supplemented by a further twenty, some written by her to Eliot’s mother in parallel with Eliot’s own letters. To the letters from Eliot’s father in the original edition are now added two more, both addressed to Eliot’s uncle, the Rev. Thomas Lamb Eliot; also included is a notable additional letter to Eliot from his mother.
    Incorporating these additional letters into the original volume has involved several editorial adjustments: the text of the letters already published remains intact, but the annotation has been revised where necessary, and much additional annotation has been provided.
     
     
    HUGH HAUGHTON

 

BIOGRAPHICAL COMMENTARY 1888–1922
     
    1888 26 SEPTEMBER – Thomas Stearns Eliot, seventh child of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Champe Stearns Eliot, born at 2635 Locust Street, St Louis, Missouri.
    1894? His nursemaid, Annie Dunne, takes him to Mrs Lockwood’s school. Spends summer holidays in Maine and at East Gloucester, Mass.
    1897 Composes his first poem, four little verses, about the sadness of having to start school again every Monday morning.
    1898 Goes as a day boy to Smith Academy.
    1899 28 JANUARY to 19 FEBRUARY – Writes and illustrates in pencil fourteen numbers of ‘A Weekly Magazine’, The Fireside, containing ‘Fiction, Gossip, Theatre, Jokes and all interesting’.
    1904 Visits the St Louis World’s Fair.
    1905 JANUARY – Publishes in the Smith Academy Record ‘The Birds of Prey’; FEBRUARY – ‘A Fable for Feasters’; APRIL – ‘A Tale of a Whale’ and ‘A Lyric’; JUNE – ‘The Man Who was King’. Recites ‘Standing upon the shore of all we know’ on Graduation Day. 19 SEPTEMBER – TSE begins the academic year at Milton Academy, Milton, Mass.
    1906 OCTOBER – Starts his freshman year at Harvard, lives at 52 Mount Auburn St. He studies Greek and English Literature, Elementary German, Medieval History and Constitutional Government. In DECEMBER he is put on probation for poor grades and ‘for working at a lower rate than most Freshmen’, although he has ‘an excellent record of attendance’.
    1907 26 FEBRUARY – TSE is relieved from probation. (He told his second wife that he ‘loafed’ for the first two years.) 24 MAY – The Harvard Advocate publishes ‘Song’: When we came home across the hill’, and 3 JUNE ‘If time and space, as Sages say’, a slightly altered reprint of ‘A Lyric’. OCTOBER – In his sophomore year he shares rooms with John Robinson and Howard Morris in 22 Russell Hall, and meets Conrad Aiken, who becomes his closest Harvard friend. He studies History of Ancient Art, French Prose and Poetry, German Prose and Poetry, Greek Literature, Greek Prose Composition, History of Ancient Philosophy and History of Modern Philosophy.

    1908 OCTOBER – begins his junior year and lives at 25 Holyoke Street. He studies the Literary History of England and its relation to that of the Continent from the Beginning to Chaucer, and from Chaucer to Elizabeth; Tendencies of European Literature of the