Summary

The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition gathers for the first time in one place the collected, uncollected, and unpublished prose of one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century. Highlights include all of Eliot's collected essays, reviews, lectures, and commentaries from The Criterion; essays from his student years at Smith Academy, Harvard, and Oxford; and his Clark and Turnbull lectures on metaphysical poetry. Each item has been textually edited, annotated, and cross-referenced by an international group of leading Eliot scholars, led by Ronald Schuchard, a renowned scholar of Eliot and Modernism.

Subscription Plans and Pricing

In this Volume

summary
The period of T. S. Eliot’s life between the ages of forty-one and forty-five was a time of great inner disturbance, including the permanent separation from his wife Vivien. And yet these difficult years also witnessed a steady widening and deepening of his critical interests, in essays that represent the crucible of Eliot’s mature literary, cultural, political, and theological thought.

Among the highlights of work included in this volume are two books of collected lecture series, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism and John Dryden: The Poet, The Dramatist, The Critic; two pamphlets, Thoughts after Lambeth and Charles Whibley; and substantial essays on seventeenth-century drama, “Cyril Tourneur,” “Thomas Heywood,” and “John Ford” that originally appeared as leading articles in the Times Literary Supplement. Also included are a dozen BBC broadcasts, restoring material cut from the original typescripts, and more than fifty miscellaneous essays, including previously uncollected Criterion editorials, prefaces, letters, and reviews.

Eliot returned to the United States in 1932 for the first time in seventeen years to assume the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard, providing in his Norton lectures his most important statement on the history and development of English literary criticism, his major engagement with the legacy of the English Romantic poets, and a principal defense of the obscurity of modern verse. He delivered more than forty public talks during the nine months he spent in the United States. Most of his talks were never intended for publication. This volume includes the texts of five unpublished American lectures reconstructed by the editors from a range of contemporary eyewitness accounts. They supplement and enrich our knowledge of Eliot’s statements on literary, cultural, and religious matters, and provide revealing glimpses into his thoughts about particular authors.

The most important previously unpublished materials in this volume are the lecture notes to Eliot’s undergraduate class on contemporary literature at Harvard, English 26: “Contemporary English Literature (1890 to the Present Time).” Ninety-two pages of handwritten notes for twenty lectures reveal unparalleled evidence of Eliot’s thoughts on his contemporaries, including James Joyce, Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, and D. H. Lawrence.

Upon his return to the United Kingdom in 1933, Eliot embarked upon a new direction as a creative writer—composing verse choruses for a religious drama. His hopes for creative renewal, however, did little to assuage the guilty qualms ascribed to the “honest poet” in the concluding lecture of The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, who worried that he had “wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.”

Table of Contents

restricted accessDownload Full Book restricted accessDownload Full EPUB
  1. English Lion, 1930-1933: Introduction
  2. Pages: ix-xxxii
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Editorial Procedures and Principles
  2. Pages: xxxiii-xl
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Acknowledgments
  2. Pages: xli-xliv
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. List of Abbreviations
  2. Pages: xlv-xlvii
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. List of Illustrations
  2. Pages: xlix
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download

Part I: Essays, Reviews, and Commentaries

1930

  1. A Commentary (Jan 1930)
  2. Pages: 3-6
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A review of God: Being an Introduction to the Science of Metabiology, by John Middleton Murry
  2. Pages: 7-10
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A review of Baudelaire and the Symbolists: Five Essays, by Peter Quennell
  2. Pages: 11-14
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. An unsigned review of A Game at Chesse, by Thomas Middleton
  2. Pages: 15-19
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Poetry and Propaganda
  2. Pages: 20-35
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Religion without Humanism
  2. Pages: 36-43
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Thinking in Verse: A Survey of Early Seventeenth-Century Poetry
  2. Pages: 44-56
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Rhyme and Reason: The Poetry of John Donne
  2. Pages: 57-70
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. The Devotional Poets of the Seventeenth Century: Donne, Herbert, Crashaw
  2. Pages: 71-84
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. To the Editor of The Bookman
  2. Pages: 85-88
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A Commentary (Apr 1930)
  2. Pages: 89-93
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. In Memoriam [Moncrieff, Lawrence, Whibley]
  2. Pages: 94
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Mystic and Politician as Poet: Vaughan, Traherne, Marvell, Milton
  2. Pages: 95-107
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. D. H. Lawrence. To the Editor of The Nation and Athenaeum
  2. Pages: 108
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. The Minor Metaphysicals: From Cowley to Dryden
  2. Pages: 109-119
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. John Dryden
  2. Pages: 120-131
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Preface to Anabasis: A Poem by St.-J. Perse,
  2. Pages: 132-137
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Message to the Anglo-Catholic Congress in London
  2. Pages: 138
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Second Message to the Anglo-Catholic Congress
  2. Pages: 139-140
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A Commentary (July 1930)
  2. Pages: 141-144
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Introduction to The Wheel of Fire, by G. Wilson Knight
  2. Pages: 145-154
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Baudelaire
  2. Pages: 155-167
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Introductory Essay to London: A Poem and The Vanity of Human Wishes by Samuel Johnson
  2. Pages: 168-175
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Arnold and Pater
  2. Pages: 176-189
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A Commentary (Oct 1930)
  2. Pages: 190-193
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. To the Editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  2. Pages: 194-196
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Cyril Tourneur
  2. Pages: 197-208
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Mocking-Birds. To the Editor of The New Statesman
  2. Pages: 209-210
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. The Book of Beauty. To the Editor of The Nation and Athenaeum
  2. Pages: 211-212
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download

1931

  1. A Commentary (Jan 1931)
  2. Pages: 213-220
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Tourneur and The Revenger’s Tragedy. To the Editor of The Times Literary Supplement
  2. Pages: 221-222
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Thoughts after Lambeth
  2. Pages: 223-250
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Classicism and Romanticism. To the Editor of The Dublin Review
  2. Pages: 251-252
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A Commentary (Apr 1931)
  2. Pages: 253-264
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Dryden the Poet
  2. Pages: 265-274
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Dryden the Dramatist
  2. Pages: 275-285
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Dryden the Critic
  2. Pages: 286-295
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. If I Were a Dean
  2. Pages: 296-299
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A review of The Prospects of Humanism, by Lawrence Hyde
  2. Pages: 300-302
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A Commentary (July 1931)
  2. Pages: 303-312
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A review of Son of Woman: The Story of D. H. Lawrence, by J. Middleton Murry
  2. Pages: 313-319
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A review of Essays of a Catholic Layman in England, by Hilaire Belloc
  2. Pages: 320-322
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. The Modern Dilemma. Syllabus for Four BBC Broadcasts
  2. Pages: 323-326
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Thomas Heywood
  2. Pages: 327-337
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. The Pensées of Pascal
  2. Pages: 338-353
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A Commentary (Oct 1931)
  2. Pages: 354-361
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A review of Fashion in Literature: A Study of Changing Taste, by E. E. Kellett
  2. Pages: 362-364
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Preface to Transit of Venus: Poems, by Harry Crosby
  2. Pages: 365-368
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Donne in our Time
  2. Pages: 369-382
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. To the Editor of The Times
  2. Pages: 383
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Charles Whibley
  2. Pages: 384-398
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. B.B.C. Talks on Fiction. The Change of Policy. To the Editor of The Times (22 Dec 1931)
  2. Pages: 399-402
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download

1932

  1. A Commentary (Jan 1932)
  2. Pages: 403-411
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. George Herbert
  2. Pages: 412-416
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Preface to Bubu of Montparnasse, by Charles-Louis Philippe. Trans. Laurence Vail
  2. Pages: 417-421
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Christianity and Communism
  2. Pages: 422-431
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Mr. Harold Monro: A Poet and his Ideal
  2. Pages: 432-435
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Religion and Science: A Phantom Dilemma
  2. Pages: 436-445
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. The Search for Moral Sanction
  2. Pages: 446-455
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A Commentary (Apr 1932)
  2. Pages: 456-463
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Building Up the Christian World
  2. Pages: 464-473
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. John Ford
  2. Pages: 474-485
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. What Is Modern Psychology? Letter to the Editor of The Listener
  2. Pages: 486-487
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A Commentary (July 1932)
  2. Pages: 488-496
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Preface to Selected Essays,
  2. Pages: 497
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A Commentary (Oct 1932)
  2. Pages: 498-505
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download

1933

  1. A Testimonial for The Cantos of Ezra Pound
  2. Pages: 506-507
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A Commentary (Jan 1933)
  2. Pages: 508-514
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A Commentary (Apr 1933)
  2. Pages: 515-521
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Critical Note to The Collected Poems of Harold Monro,
  2. Pages: 522-526
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A Commentary (July 1933)
  2. Pages: 527-533
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Catholicism and International Order
  2. Pages: 534-546
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A review of Letters of Mrs. Gaskell and Charles Eliot Norton, 1855-1865
  2. Pages: 547-549
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A Commentary (Oct 1933)
  2. Pages: 550-556
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Housman on Poetry. A review of The Name and Nature of Poetry, by A. E. Housman
  2. Pages: 557-560
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Report on The Listener Poems
  2. Pages: 561-566
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Measure for Measure at the Old Vic. To the Editor of The Times
  2. Pages: 567-568
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download

PART 2: LECTURES IN AMERICA, 1932-33

  1. A. Chronology of Lectures and Readings
  2. Pages: 571-573
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. THE USE OF POETRY AND THE USE OF CRITICISM: Prefaces, 1933/1964
  2. Pages: 574-578
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Introduction: November 4th, 1932
  2. Pages: 579-596
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Apology for the Countess of Pembroke: November 25th, 1932
  2. Pages: 597-613
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. The Age of Dryden: December 2nd, 1932
  2. Pages: 608-624
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Wordsworth and Coleridge: December 9th, 1932
  2. Pages: 625-640
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Shelley and Keats: February 17th, 1933
  2. Pages: 641-653
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Matthew Arnold: March 3rd, 1933
  2. Pages: 654-667
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. The Modern Mind: March 17th, 1933
  2. Pages: 668-684
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Conclusion: March 31st, 1933
  2. Pages: 685-694
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. The Bible as Scripture and as Literature
  2. Pages: 695-708
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download

  1. THE PERCY GRAEME TURNBULL MEMORIAL LECTURES: THE VARIETIES OF METAPHYSICAL POETRY
  2. Pages: 709
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Toward a Definition of Metaphysical Poetry
  2. Pages: 710-725
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. The Conceit in Donne and Crashaw
  2. Pages: 726-741
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Laforgue and Corbière in our Time
  2. Pages: 742-757
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download

  1. Lecture Notes for English 26: English Literature from 1890 to the Present Day
  2. Pages: 758-809
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. The Modern Dilemma [originally "Two Masters]
  2. Pages: 810-816
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Address by T. S. Eliot, ’06, to the Class of ’33, June 17, 1933
  2. Pages: 817-824
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download

  1. B. Editorial Introduction to Reconstructed Lectures, 1933
  2. Pages: 825-827
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Edward Lear and Modern Poetry
  2. Pages: 828-833
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. The Development of Taste in Poetry
  2. Pages: 834-836
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. The Study of Shakespeare Criticism
  2. Pages: 837-839
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. The Tendency of Some Modern Poetry
  2. Pages: 840-845
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
  1. English Poets as Letter Writers
  2. Pages: 846-849
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download

Appendix

  1. The Blessing of the New Font, Narthex and Organ
  2. Pages: 850
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download

  1. Index
  2. Pages: 851-873
  3. restricted access
    • View HTML View
    • Download PDF Download
Editor Bios
Jason Harding, a Reader in English Studies at Durham University, is the author of The Criterion: Cultural Politics and Periodical Networks in Inter-War Britain (2002). His distinguished editions of works by Eliot and modernist writers include T. S. Eliot and the Concept of Tradition (2007), Ford Madox Ford, Modernist Magazines and Editing (2010), T. S. Eliot in Context (2011); The New Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot (2016); and Modernism and Non-Translation (2019). His numerous reviews and essays on modern writers have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, the Cambridge Quarterly, Essays in Criticism and Modernism/modernity.
Ronald Schuchard, the Goodrich C. White Professor of English, Emeritus, at Emory University, is the author of award-winning Eliot's Dark Angel (1999) and The Last Minstrels: Yeats and the Revival of the Bardic Arts (2008). The editor of Eliot's Clark and Turnbull lectures, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry (1993), he is co-editor with John Kelly of The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, Volume 3 (1994), Volume 4 (2005), winner of the MLA's Cohen Award for a Distinguished Edition of Letters, and Volume 5 (forthcoming). A former Guggenheim fellow and founder-director of the T. S. Eliot International Summer School (2009-2013), he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Additional Information
ISBN
9781421418957
Related ISBN
9781421406893
DOI
10.1353/book.67878
OCLC
1118445015
Launched on MUSE
2022-12-19
Open Access
No

Browse Images

T. S. Eliot