Introduction

Eliot was at high school when he began writing prose in the form of short stories. In the course of a long and illustrious career, he became the 'Man of Letters' of the twentieth century, publishing pieces on a remarkably wide range of subjects: literature (poetry and drama, both historical and contemporary, though comparatively little on prose fiction); religion(s); church and secular politics, both national and international; European culture (about which he cared deeply); publishing; anthropology; philosophy, and the history of ideas; though he was also not above addressing a school graduation class or writing with open affection about the music-hall artist Marie Lloyd. In some years his output was prodigious, especially in view of the fact that he had a full-time job and was also doing other things as a writer.

As might be expected of a man of his position and reputation, Eliot was acutely aware of what he wished to see published (or not published). The present edition collects in book form the prose that T. S. Eliot allowed to reach print, or that circumstances indicate he would have allowed to reach print. Excluded are the Clark Lectures (1926) and the Turnbull Lectures (1933), which Eliot did not publish, but which already exist in book form edited by Ronald Schuchard, as The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry by T. S. Eliot (1993). Eliot's letters to newspapers and periodicals are covered by The Letters of T. S. Eliot (2009- ), and, with the exception of letters that are in effect memorial tributes and obituary notices, or public greetings to literary and other societies, are not duplicated here. I have, however, included complete issues of The Christian News-Letter which Eliot produced as guest-editor: though they are cast in letter form, they are quite distinct from letters written to a periodical. Similarly, when Eliot single-handedly fabricates a letters page in The Criterion under various pseudonyms, he is publishing fiction, not writing a letter to the periodical.

The printed texts of Eliot's public broadcasts and lectures are included (they were not always printed); as are his translations, on grounds that they reveal what work by others he considered important enough to deserve translation. Interviews are reproduced where there is circumstantial evidence that a substantial and faithful record of the interview was preserved.

Sometimes the published texts are of doubtful status. Following Eliot's addresses to the Fédération britannique des comités de l'Alliance of 2 June 1951 and 7 June 1952, the texts were printed in Assemblée générale tenue le samedi 2 juin 1951, 12-14, and 7 juin 1952, [13]-14, with the proceedings distributed to members. There is no documentary evidence that Eliot approved publication. He certainly did not approach the prospect of having to give the addresses with enthusiasm, and his two other addresses, of 19 January 1949 and 23 May 1953, were not printed. Following a lecture on 'Poetry in the Theatre' which he gave at Rome on 9 December 1947, an article entitled 'Nel poésia del teatro' appeared in La fiera letteraria, 2 (25 Dec. 1947), 5-6. It was translated anonymously into Italian, and the original text does not survive. (It eventually became 'Poetry and Drama'.) An earlier version of 'From Poe to Valéry', a lecture entitled 'Edgar Poe et la France' which Eliot gave between 14 and 21 April 1948, was printed in Essais choisis, 6 (1950), 391-410. The text was a translation into French by Henri Fluchère. However, it even included sections that Eliot had deleted in the typescript of the lecture (King's College, Hayward Bequest, H1k). It is difficult to feel confident that the texts of such publications are reliable, let alone backed by authorial approval.

Eliot's book 'blurbs' are excluded, on the same grounds as they were excluded by Donald Gallup from his bibliography of the poet's writings:

F. V. Morley and others have testified to T. S. Eliot's skill at writing the concise descriptions of books, especially of poetry, published by Faber and Faber and used by them in catalogue listings and advertisements. But these statements were often modified and sometimes rewritten by other members of the firm and even on occasion by the author of the book involved. At least some of the Faber catalogues exist (in the possession of Mrs Eliot and also in the collection of the late John Hayward now in the Library of King's College, Cambridge) with T. S. Eliot's own notations concerning his authorship of such descriptions. It has seemed best, however, not to attempt a listing of these items, which would inevitably be incomplete and might well be misleading (Gallup, p. 12).

Morley stated that 'Eliot wrote thousands of them. I can testify, from personal knowledge both of Eliot and blurb-writing, that during his publishing career he has turned out so many blurbs as to make it quite impossible that he should have had time or energy left over to write anything else.'1 Seventy-four 'blurbs' were initialled by Eliot in Faber book catalogues now in John Hayward's collection, and three of those are identified by the initials jointly of Eliot and the author. In 2007, Ronald Schuchard stated: 'Well over a hundred have been positively identified, but many more will surface.'2 We do not know, and probably never will know, exactly how many Eliot wrote, or how many involved collaboration, or what forms such collaboration took.

Research on the book 'blurbs' is a work in progress, therefore, and one with an indeterminate outcome. A sample - perhaps, for all we know, a very small sample - would sit uncomfortably in a 'collected' edition of Eliot's prose.

Guide to Using This Edition

This is a text-only edition, with the prose arranged in a single chronological sequence. However, the chronology has to be handled carefully in view of the fact that it was Eliot's practice to revise his work. (It is a shortcoming of Donald Gallup's indispensable 1969 bibliography that he does not always note that a reprinted text has also undergone revision: this means that all versions must be scrutinised for variants.) Where Eliot revised wording, even slightly, the latest revised version is printed at the point at which it appeared, and variants in wording are recorded there from the earlier version(s). An example: 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' was originally published in two parts in The Egoist in September and November/December 1919; both parts were combined and revised in The Sacred Wood (November 1920); and the text was further revised in Selected Essays (September 1932). Readers will find the text under Selected Essays, together with a record of the changes Eliot made at each stage. The earlier versions are recorded at the point at which they appeared, with an indication that they would undergo revision.

Even where revision involves merely putting a word in italics or quotation marks to introduce a new emphasis or attitude, this is regarded as a substantive change. In the few cases where revision also involves translation from French into English, variants are not recorded: translation itself constitutes a form of variation, and it would be difficult to decide, on the basis of often very slight differences of idiom and nuance, which variants are to be recorded and which not. Both the French and the English versions are printed in full, however. Textual variants are recorded below the latest revised text and variants are recorded by paragraph. Thus, '4 vast energy] energy' records that in paragraph 4, where the revised text has 'vast energy', the previously published text has 'energy'. Where the text was revised more than once, each variant is labelled. This edition aims to provide the most complete record available of Eliot's revisions to his authorised prose.

For the first time, page numbers in the text chosen for printing are inserted in a different font in editorial square brackets - for example [76], for convenience of reference to the original publications.

The conventions of all publications are regularised to Faber's house style. Block quotations are given in roman, single-spaced, and indented, and quotation marks at the beginning and end are not reproduced. Inconsistent punctuation for introducing block quotations (':-' as well as ':') is regularised to a colon. American spellings, when used, have been retained.

The numbers of volumes and issues of periodicals are given in arabic. Thus '2. 3' means 'volume 2, number 3'.

Obvious misprints, such as 'desert' for 'dessert', or 'writed' for 'writer', or beginning a sentence with 'they' instead of 'They', are silently corrected. It is not always possible to distinguish a misprint from an authorial error, but the following have been routinely corrected: passages in French (almost always a question of accents: Eliot's French was good, and it is hard to...