“Eliot After ‘The Waste Land’” by Robert Crawford

After T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) published The Waste Land in 1922, it seemed that there might be a creative dry spell. As far as poetry was concerned, there was. He was struggling with his marriage and the declining mental health of his wife, Vivien; he was editing his literary magazine Criterion; and he was maintaining a full-time job in banking. The next year, he transitioned from banker to editor at Faber & Gwyer (eventually to become Faber & Faber), where he stayed for the next four decades. 

It is the second half of Eliot’s life, from 1923 to his death in 1965, that is the focus of Eliot After ‘The Waste Land’ by British poet and writer Robert Crawford. Crawford completed the first volume, The Young T.S. Eliot, in 2015. He’s completed the monumental biography seven years later, and, as he notes in the introduction, this biography has the benefit of the writer’s access to the extensive correspondence of Eliot and Emily Hale, his romantic interest for a considerable period of time. The letters were finally made available in 2020. 

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.