“Like a shell with no machinery in it”: The Letters of T.S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898–1922 and Volume 2: 1923–1925

The publication of the second volume of T.S. Eliot’s letters alongside the revised edition of the first volume gives readers access to correspondence from Eliot’s childhood to the year he ended his employment at Lloyds Bank. The first volume includes previously unpublished letters Eliot wrote to contemporary writers, as well as letters from Vivien and other correspondents. The second volume of Eliot’s letters is most valuable for the insight it provides into his first marriage and his efforts to launch the Criterion. As both were sources of consistent stress, the portrait that emerges in the collection is of a man trapped under the weight of strenuous circumstances. At the same time, letters written to Virginia Woolf and Ezra Pound suggest that the Criterion offered Eliot a rewarding distraction from the daily strain of his personal life.