The Poems of T. S. Eliot: Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems - Softcover

Eliot, T. S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374235139 ISBN 13: 9780374235130

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018

Synopsis

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 rediscovered only decades later; poems that circulated privately during his lifetime; and love poems from his final years, written for his wife, Valerie. Calling upon Eliot’s critical writings as well as his drafts, letters, and other original materials, Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue have provided a commentary that illuminates the imaginative life of each poem.

This first volume respects Eliot’s decisions by opening with his Collected Poems 1909–1962 as he arranged and issued it shortly before his death. This is followed by poems uncollected but either written for or suitable for publication, and by a new reading text of the drafts of The Waste Land. The second volume opens with the two books of verse of other kinds that Eliot issued: Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and Anabasis, his translation of St.-John Perse’s Anabase. Each of these sections is accompanied by its own commentary. Finally, pertaining to the entire edition, there is a comprehensive textual history that contains not only variants from all known drafts and the many printings but also extended passages amounting to hundreds of lines of compelling verse.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas Stearns Eliot, a poet, critic, and publisher, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1888. He settled in England in 1915, where for a few years he worked in the foreign section of Lloyds Bank. His first book of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917. In 1922, he became editor of the literary journal The Criterion, publishing The Waste Land in its first outing. In 1925 Eliot was recruited by Geoffrey Faber to be the literary editor and a director of a new publishing house, Faber and Gwyer (later Faber and Faber). It was a role in which he excelled, going on to establish Faber as a leading publisher of poetry with a list that embraced the outstanding English-language poets of the twentieth century. Eliot received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. He continued to work at Faber until his death in 1965.

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374235139
• ISBN 13: 9780374235130
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 1344
• Editor: Ricks Christopher, McCue Jim