Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
T. S. Eliot
-
Standard Name: Eliot, T. S.
Used Form: Thomas Stearns Eliot
TSE
, an American settled in England, was the dominant voice in English poetry during the first half of the twentieth century, as well as an immensely influential critic. His early experimental poems excel at catching an atmosphere or mood, often a moment of stasis and self-doubt. The Waste Land, a brilliant collage of fragments, has been seen to express the fears of a whole society about the threatened end of culture and amenity called civilization. After Eliot's conversion to Christianity his poetry moved to sombre investigations of the spiritual life: of time, fate, decision, guilt, and reconciliation. Meanwhile his criticism grappled with the the relation of past to present in terms of the contemporary relationship to tradition. TSE
also wrote lively comic verse, and in theatrical writing he moved on from pageant and historical religious drama to symbolic representation of spiritual issues through events in banal daily life.
Many of these poems first appeared in newspapers and periodicals: the Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, Oxford Poetry, Poetry Review, and so on, and one pseudonymously as a submission...
Publishing
Caroline Blackwood
CB
changed publishers to Heinemann
for a volume of short stories and essays titled with the words of Shakespeare
's Ophelia, which had been given a new slant by Eliot
in The Waste Land:...
Publishing
George Orwell
GO
completed his well-known satirical fable, Animal Farm, which was rejected for publication by Gollancz
, Cape
, Collins
, and Faber
(in the person of T. S. Eliot
).
Meyers, Jeffrey. A Reader’s Guide to George Orwell. Littlefield, Adams, 1977.
41
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Publishing
Stella Gibbons
SG
's poem The Giraffes appeared in the Criterion, the literary magazine founded and edited by T. S. Eliot
.
Oliver, Reggie. Out of the Woodshed: A Portrait of Stella Gibbons. Bloomsbury, 1998.
50
Publishing
Kathleen Raine
KR
knew as a child that poetry was her vocation. Her mother wrote down her poems before she could hold a pencil herself.
Watts, Janet. “Kathleen Raine”. The Guardian, 8 July 2003, p. 25.
25
As an undergraduate she had poems published by William Empson
in...
Publishing
Ann Jellicoe
The play opened in Cambridge because the Royal Court
, despite their earlier supportiveness, wanted to test the waters before staging another Jellicoe play in London. AJ
credits John Osborne
for persuading them to produce...
Publishing
Anne Ridler
AR
's first volume published with Faber & Faber
benefited from the patronage of her former bosses there. T. S. Eliot
recommended its publication,
Ridler, Anne. “Working for T.S. Eliot: A Personal Reminiscence”. Poetry Review, Vol.
73
, No. 1, 1983, pp. 46-9.
49
and the first edition appeared on expensive hand-made paper, which...
Publishing
Djuna Barnes
DB
had tried to find a publisher for Nightwood while she was living in New York, but the manuscript was turned down repeatedly. Emily Coleman
suggested revisions, which Barnes carried out. Coleman also exploited literary...
Publishing
Anne Ridler
It had been commissioned by Martin Browne
, the lessee of the Mercury Theatre, who, inspired by the success of T. S. Eliot
's Murder in the Cathedral, set out to encourage poets to...
Publishing
Iris Murdoch
The first novel which IM
offered to a publisher was read by T. S. Eliot
for Faber and Faber
; he rejected it, perhaps on grounds of the wartime paper shortage.
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins, 2002.
170
Publishing
Djuna Barnes
T. S. Eliot
was once again instrumental in editing her manuscript and recommending it for publication with Faber and Faber
. However, he wrote a blurb for the play which suggested frustration at DB
's...
Publishing
Virginia Woolf
VW
published in The Dial her short story Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street, after Eliot
had declined to take it for The Criterion.
Briggs, Julia. Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life. Allen Lane, 2005.
130n3
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Chatto and Windus, 1996.
444-5
Publishing
Rose Macaulay
One of RM
's last articles, The First Impact of The Waste Land, appeared in T. S. Eliot
: A Symposium for His Seventieth Birthday, edited by Neville Braybrooke
.
Crawford, Alice. Paradise Pursued: The Novels of Rose Macaulay. Associated University Presses, 1995.
193
Publishing
Mary Butts
This book, originally titled Alexander the Great, was completed in 1931, but MB
had some difficulty getting it published. She sent her manuscript to T. S. Eliot
at Faber and Faber
, but he...
Publishing
Gertrude Stein
GS
began her period of portraiture around 1908. Her portraits resembled biographical sketches but they were usually more impressionistic than factual.She thought that this genre allowed her to capture the immediacy of characters and to...
