Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
T. S. Eliot
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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.
Wellesley, Dorothy. Far Have I Travelled. James Barrie, 1952.
133
In the years after the war she formed her important...
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
They developed a relationship that was competitive yet sustaining and essential to both. In August 1920 Woolf commented on Mansfield in her diary: a woman caring as I care for writing is rare enough I...
Friends, Associates
Harriet Shaw Weaver
As editor, HSW
attempted to recruit Storm Jameson
for the paper, but Jameson unhappily could not accept a full-time position. She also began to acquaint herself with contributors, such as H. D.
, whom she...
Friends, Associates
Cecily Mackworth
Her literary circle in Paris was highly eclectic: the many camps in which she had friends included the Surrealist rump, the incoming Existentialists, and the Communists (who were mostly ex-Surrealists).
Mackworth, Cecily. Ends of the World. Carcanet, 1987.
Leonard Woolf wrote to Eliot, whose Prufrock and Other Observations he had read, to invite him to send some work to the Hogarth Press
. The letter led to a meeting, and ultimately to the...
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
Harriet Shaw Weaver
had approached the Hogarth Press
about publishing Ulysses in April 1918, but the Woolfs declined, mainly because they could not have printed so massive a work themselves and because Leonard could find...
Friends, Associates
Hannah Arendt
HA
's journalistic and editorial work meant that she met almost everyone who belonged to the intellectual scene in New York, as well as those just passing through, like T. S. Eliot
. Those who...
Friends, Associates
Anne Ridler
Her brother was working for publishers George Bell
, and she met a number of authors, including Antonia White
and Margaret Kennedy
. Later, through her own work, she met with T. S. Eliot
's...
Friends, Associates
Harriet Shaw Weaver
Her friendship with Dora Marsden
remained constant until Marsden's mental health deteriorated. Marsden was one of the few people who knew and addressed HSW
by her pseudonym, Josephine Wright. After Weaver closed down the...
RP
knew T. S. Eliot
well enough to enjoy a courtly encounter with him at a bus stop, but she felt his great innovations had not necessarily been a good thing for English poetry, and...
Friends, Associates
Marianne Moore
MM
corresponded with T. S. Eliot
from 1921 until the year before his death. She was a friend of H. D.
and of Bryher
, and her editors believe that every one of her five...
Friends, Associates
Susan Hill
While studying at King's CollegeSH
, an aspiring writer, wrote to novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson
and her writer husband C. P. Snow
for advice on the profession. The couple answered her letters and even...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Bishop
In her junior year at college EB
interviewed T. S. Eliot
, who was in town to deliver the Norton Lectures. A year later she met Marianne Moore
.
Marshall, Megan. Elizabeth Bishop. A Miracle for Breakfast. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.
