Books by T. S. Eliot

'The term culture . . . includes all the characteristic activities and interests of a people; Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes, the twelfth of August, a cup final, the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, Wensleydale cheese, boiled cabbage cut into sections, beetroot in vinegar, 19th century Gothic churches and the music of Elgar. The reader can make his own list . . .'In this famous essay T. S. Eliot examines the principal uses of the word, and the conditions in which culture itself can flourish'So rich in ideas that it is difficult to select two or three of them for comment . . . it is a natural history of culture.' Sunday Times

As a poet, editor and essayist, T. S. Eliot was one of the defining figures of twentieth century poetry. This selection, which was made by Eliot himself, includes many of his most celebrated works, including The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land.Other volumes in this series: Auden, Betjemen, Plath, Hughes and Yeats.

Eliot's haunting verse play, set in a country house in the north of England, was performed at the Westminster Theatre in London in March 1939, six months before the outbreak of war.'What is wonderful is the marvellous opening out of consciousness, the flowering of meaning, which makes the play an account of a spiritual experience. There are passages of great poetic beauty, and statements which are the fruits of a lifetime devoted to poetry.' Listener

The Confidential Clerk was first produced at the Edinburgh Festival in the summer of 1953.'The dialogue of The Confidential Clerk has a precision and a lightly felt rhythm unmatched in the writing of any contemporary dramatist.' Times Literary Supplement'A triumph of dramatic skill: the handling of the two levels of the play is masterly and Eliot's verse registers its greatest achievement on the stage - passages of great lyrical beauty are incorporated into the dialogue.' Spectator

Poet, dramatist, critic and editor, T. S. Eliot was one of the defining figures of twentieth-century poetry. This edition of The Complete Poems and Plays, published for the first time in paperback, includes all of his verse and work for the stage, from Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) to Four Quartets (1943), and includes such literary landmarks as The Waste Land, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and Murder in the Cathedral.'Each year Eliot's presence reasserts itself at a deeper level, to an audience that is surprised to find itself more chastened, more astonished, more humble.' Ted Hughes

This gave my essays a kind of urgency, the warmth of appeal of the advocate, which my later, more detached and I hope more judicial essays cannot claim.' This urgency is still apparent more than eighty years after the essays first appeared.

'Literary criticism is a distinctive activity of the civilised mind.' With Eliot's dictum in mind, Professor Kermode has selected from the whole range of his critical writings, some of them dating back to before 1918.

Volume Two covers the early years of his editorship of The Criterion (the periodical that Eliot launched with Lady Rothermere's backing in 1922), publication of The Hollow Men and the course of Eliot's thinking about poetry and poetics after The Waste Land. The correspondence charts Eliot's intellectual journey towards conversion to the Anglican faith in 1927, as well as his transformation from banker to publisher, ending with his appointment as a director of the new publishing house of Faber & Gwyer, in late 1925, and the appearance of Poems 1909-1925, Eliot's first publication with the house with which he would be associated for the rest of his life. It was partly because of Eliot's profoundly influential work as cultural commentator and editor that the correspondence is so prolific and so various, and Volume Two of the Letters fully demonstrates the emerging continuities between poet, essayist, editor and letter-writer.

For utallige moderne og avangardistiske lyrikere har T. S. Eliot været den store inspirator og igangsætter. Dette er ikke uden grund - har man blot een gang læst eller hørt Prufrock så glemmer man det aldrig. Eliot ved hvor skoen trykker og nærmer sig i dette digt selve livets substans.