“The next time I teach Eliot to undergrads I will assign this swift, witty, enjoyable invitation to T. S. Eliot’s work and thought. Maddrey knows everything about Eliot, but he grinds no axe which frees professors and students to grind their own. Scrupulously footnoted for professional use, not short but concise, it is stuffed with unfamiliar and apt quotations. Maddrey quotes a 1949 interview about The Cocktail Party, in which Eliot said, ‘If there is nothing more in the play than what I was aware of meaning, then it must be a pretty thin piece of work.’ There’s the New Criticism in 25 words, 21 of them monosyllables. Eliot asks us to quit asking what he thought and to do some thinking ourselves. This book will help.” —George J. Leonard, author of Into the Light of Things and The End of Innocence. Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities, San Francisco State University Though he was born in St. Louis, Missouri and attended Harvard University, at the age of 26, Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965) emigrated to England, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. Influenced equally by his formative years in the New World and his experiences in London during and after World War I, Eliot strove to reconcile a variety of conflicting ideas while trapped in an unhappy marriage—a struggle that gave rise to some of the greatest poems of the 20th century. In Simply Eliot, Joseph Maddrey plumbs the emotional and intellectual life of the man whom critic Edmund Wilson called "one of our only authentic poets.” Taking The Waste Land (written in the aftermath of World War I) and Four Quartets (published 1936–1942) as reference points, Maddrey chronicles Eliot's attempts to create a coherent worldview, and explores how his religious conversion in 1927 led to a spiritual rebirth that allowed him to produce his ultimate poetic statement. Making use of previously unavailable materials, including over 5,000 personal letters, Maddrey offers an intimate and incisive portrait of Eliot, and illustrates his continued relevance as both a Romantic and Classical poet, as well as a religious and spiritual thinker.

This book, first published in 1991, supplies a neglected cultural context for T. S. Eliot’s writings of the 1930s and 1940s, particularly Four Quartets, and attempts to disprove the widespread belief in Eliot’s unproblematic commitment to England, and the ‘Englishness’. The book traces Eliot’s classicism not only in linguistic and formalist terms but also in his construction of England in the Quartets and Quartets-related essays. His practice is related to the vigorous polemic concerning the definition of England found in the 1930s and 1940s, in material as diverse as landscape painting, advertising, travel literature and the detective novel. This original and provocative text will not only be of interest to students and teachers of Eliot, but to those interested in representations of nationality.

This chronological survey of major influences on T.S. Eliot's worldview covers the poet's spiritual and intellectual evolution in stages, by trying to see the world as Eliot did. It examines his childhood influences as well as the literary influences that inspired him to write his earliest poetry; his life as an American expatriate living in London from 1915 to 1930, including his ill-fated marriage and his intellectual engagement with the literary traditions of his new country; and the ways in which his intellectual pursuits fostered a spiritual rebirth that simultaneously reflected his past and revealed his future, demonstrating how the early Romantic revolutionary became a staunch defender of tradition.

A carefully revised and corrected second edition of a classic book on our century's best-known poet. 'An important and original study, which admirably generates fresh thought about Eliot.' Journal of American Studies

Best known for his works "The Waste Land", "Four Quartets", and "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock," T S Eliot is one of the most popular 20th-century poets studied in high school and college English classes. This work explores the life and works of this amazing Nobel Prize-winning writer, with analyses of Eliot's writing.

Criticism of Eliot has ignored the public dimension of his life and work. His poetry is often seen as the private record of an internal spiritual struggle. Professor Cooper shows how Eliot deliberately addressed a North Atlantic 'mandarinate' fearful of social disintegration during the politically turbulent 1930s. Almost immediately following publication, Four Quartets was accorded canonical status as a work that promised a personal harmony divorced from the painful disharmonies of the emerging postwar world. Cooper connects Eliot's careers as banker, director and editor to a much wider cultural agenda. He aimed to reinforce established social structures during a period of painful political transition. This powerful and original study re-establishes the public context in which Eliot's work was received and understood. It will become an essential reference work for all interested in a wider understanding of Eliot and of Anglo-American cultural relations.