“[A] vast treasure house . . . Eliot's letters are like what he once called poetry itself: the highest form of entertainment.”—Anthony Brandt
(Anthony Brandt )
“[Eliot’s] success is an improbable and amazing story, and the publication, in two volumes, of his correspondence from 1898 to 1925 . . . lets us watch that story as it was unfolding, day by day, from the inside.”—Louis Menand, New Yorker
(Louis Menand
New Yorker )
“Weirdly gripping . . . one never knows when one might be stopped dead by a letter of singular importance.”—James Longenbach, The Nation
(James Longenbach
The Nation )
“Better than any biography could, these letters capture the unremitting nature of Eliot's anxieties, without which he would not have written his greatest poems.”—Abigail Deutsch, Wall Street Journal
(Abigail Deutsch
Wall Street Journal )
“Read[s] as a who's who of literature . . . Eliot's letters poignantly detail triumph, tragedy, and hard-earned mutual respect.”—Publishers Weekly
(
Publishers Weekley )
“These letters do reveal the anxieties boiled down into ‘The Waste Land.’ They also show us the graces this browbeaten life possessed.”—William Logan, New York Times Book Review
(William Logan
New York Times Book Review )
“[Of] inestimable value . . . long-awaited [and] definitive.”—Jeff Simon, Buffalo News
(Jeff Simon
Buffalo News )
“In these adroitly annotated volumes, the poet’s conquest of literary London is brought brilliantly to life.”—Edward Short, Weekly Standard
(Edward Short
Weekly Standard )
“These two absorbing volumes . . . will fascinate every lover of literature, not just poetry.”—Benjamin Ivry, San Francisco Chronicle
(Benjamin Ivry
San Francisco Chronicle )
“New, detailed literary history of Eliot and his age. . . . Essential.”—L. L. Johnson, Choice
(L. L. Johnson
Choice )
“This new volume of letters shows Eliot going through tumultuous challenges and hardships. The letters strengthen our sense of the poetry’s authenticity.”—Christopher J. Knight, Commonweal
(Christopher J. Knight
Commonweal )
“These chunky tomes of his correspondence allow us to follow day by day, drop by harrowing drop, Eliot’s ‘rudely forced’ metamorphosis into the poet of hysteria whose sufferings enabled him, like Dostoevsky, to find ‘the entrance to a genuine and personal universe.’”—Mark Ford, New York Review of Books
(Mark Ford
The New York Review of Books )
Valerie Eliot, née Esmé Valerie Fletcher, is the widow and literary executor of the Nobel Prize–winning poet T. S. Eliot. She became Eliot's second wife in 1957, and their marriage continued until his death in 1965. In addition to editing the first two volumes of the poet's letters, she has edited T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land, a Facsimile & Transcript of the Original Drafts. She lives in London. Hugh Haughton is professor of English at the University of York, and author of The Poetry of Derek Mahon.
