T. S Eliot

These playful verses by a celebrated poet have delighted readers and cat lovers around the world ever since they were gathered for publication in 1939. As Valerie Eliot has pointed out, there are a number of references to cats in T.S. Eliot's work, but it was to his godchildren, particularly Tom Faber and Alison Tandy, in the 1930s, that he first revealed himself as "Old Possum" and for whom he composed his poems; later inspired Andrew Lloyd Webber's...

The Waste Land is a long poem by T. S. Eliot. It is widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central text in Modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of The Criterion and in the United States in the November issue of The Dial. It was published in book form in December 1922. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruelest month", "I will...

A dramatization in verse of the murder of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury.

A few months before The Waste Land was published in 1922, T.S. Eliot gave the manuscript to his benefactor in New York, John Quinn. At the same time, he sold to Quinn a notebook containing about fifty poems that he had written during his twenties. It was not until 1968, three years after the poet's death, that the double cache was unveiled within the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. The early poems, from the notebook and the accompanying...

Between 1935, when Murder in the Cathedral was first produced at the Canterbury Festival, and 1958, when The Elder Statesman opened at the Edinburgh Festival prior to engagements in London and New York, Eliot had given three other plays to the theater. His paramount concerns can be traced through all five works. They have been said to be closely related, marking stages in the development of a new and individual form of drama, in which the poet...

The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism is a collection of literary essays written by T. S. Eliot. Originally published in 1920, these essays explore various aspects of poetry, literary criticism, and the nature of artistic expression. The collection is a significant work that sheds light on Eliot's views on poetry and provides insights into the modernist literary movement. "The Sacred Wood" is significant not only for its exploration of specific...

One of our most prized writers takes a poignant look at the powerful influences of religion and culture in the Western world in these two penetrating essays. The first, The Idea of a Christian Society, examines the undeniable link between religion, politics, and economy, suggesting that a real Christian society requires a direct criticism of political and economic systems. And in Notes towards the Definition of Culture, Eliot sets out to discover...

A comedic play about the universal quest for meaning, written in some of Eliot's "most beautiful poetry" (The New York Times). A sterling example of contemporary theater, The Cocktail Party is a dramatic tour de force from one of our greatest writers to date.

The award-winning author shares his thoughts on literature, religion, and the classics in a series of essays. A collection of essays grappling with some of the most significant topics of our time, Essays Ancient and Modern reveals Eliot's thoughts on his literary contemporaries and predecessors, the role of religion in a secular society, and the continuing tradition of the classics in modern education. Astute and erudite, here we see the inner thoughts...

The first volume of the first paperback edition of The Poems of T. S. Eliot This two-volume critical edition of T. S. Eliot's poems establishes a new text of the Collected Poems 1909–1962, rectifying accidental omissions and errors that have crept in during the century since Eliot's astonishing debut, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." In addition to the masterpieces, The Poems of T. S. Eliot contains the poems of Eliot's youth, which were...