The Letters of T. S. Eliot

“[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

“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

“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

“Weirdly gripping . . . one never knows when one might be stopped dead by a letter of singular importance.”—James Longenbach, The Nation

“Read[s] as a who's who of literature . . . Eliot's letters poignantly detail triumph, tragedy, and hard-earned mutual respect.”—Publishers Weekly

“[Of] inestimable value . . . long-awaited [and] definitive.”—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

“These two absorbing volumes . . . will fascinate every lover of literature, not just poetry.”—Benjamin Ivry, San Francisco Chronicle

“New, detailed literary history of Eliot and his age. . . . Essential.”—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


“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

“A superbly presented collection”—James Broderick, Simply Charly website

“[A] vast treasure house . . . Eliot's letters are like what he once called poetry itself: the highest form of entertainment.”—Anthony Brandt