A Vintage Classics edition of T. S. Eliot's most groundbreaking poems

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. Those famous concluding lines of T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men have resonated with readers for nearly a century. As with April is the cruelest month, from The Waste Land and Do I dare disturb the universe?, from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Eliot's words have permanently entered our cultural bloodstream. Through the poems in this volume, representing his first four published collections, Eliot reshaped modern literature with a daring and overpowering vision of a decaying civilization and the urgent need for spiritual renewal.

The inspiration for the iconic musical Cats, T. S. Eliot's classic and delightful collection of poetry about cats, with whimsical illustrations by Edward Gorey.

These lovable cat poems were written by T. S. Eliot for his godchildren and continue to delight children and adults alike. This collection is a curious and artful homage to felines young and old, merry and fierce, small and unmistakably round. Also includes Edward Gorey's charming pen and ink illustrations.

The celebrated, last major verse written by Nobel laureate T. S. Eliot.

Considered by Eliot himself to be his finest work, Four Quartets is a rich composition that expands the spiritual vision introduced in The Waste Land. Here, in four linked poems (Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding), spiritual, philosophical, and personal themes emerge through symbolic allusions and literary and religious references from both Eastern and Western thought. It is the culminating achievement by a man considered the greatest poet of the twentieth century and one of the seminal figures in the evolution of modernism.

The inspiration for the iconic musical Cats, T. S. Eliot's classic and delightful collection of poetry about cats, with whimsical illustrations by Edward Gorey.

These lovable cat poems were written by T. S. Eliot for his godchildren and continue to delight children and adults alike. This collection is a curious and artful homage to felines young and old, merry and fierce, small and unmistakably round. Also includes Edward Gorey's charming pen and ink illustrations.

A Penguin Classic

While recovering from a mental collapse in a Swiss sanitarium in 1921, T. S. Eliot finished what became the definitive poem of the modern condition, one that still casts a large and ominous shadow over twentieth-century poetry. Built upon the imagery of the Grail legend, the Fisher King, and ancient fertility cults, The Waste Land is both a poetic diagnosis of an ailing civilization and a desperate quest for spiritual renewal. Through pastiche and collage Eliot unfolds a nightmarish landscape of sexual disorder and spiritual desolation, inhabited by the voice (literary, historical, mythic, contemporary) of an unconscious that is at turns deeply personal and culturally collective. This edition includes The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Portrait of a Lady, Gerontion, and more.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Also includes Prufrock and Other Observations, Poems (1920), and The Sacred Wood
Introduction by Mary Karr

First published in 1922, The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot's masterpiece, is not only one of the key works of modernism but also one of the greatest poetic achievements of the twentieth century. A richly allusive pilgrimage of spiritual and psychological torment and redemption, Eliot's poem exerted a revolutionary influence on his contemporaries, summoning forth a potent new poetic language. As Kenneth Rexroth wrote, Eliot articulated the mind of an epoch in words that seemed its most natural expression. As commanding as his verse, Eliot's criticism also transformed twentieth-century letters, and this Modern Library edition includes a selection of Eliot's most important essays.

Two long essays: The Idea of a Christian Society on the direction of religious thought toward criticism of political and economic systems; and Notes towards the Definition of Culture on culture, its meaning, and the dangers threatening the legacy of the Western world.

T. S. Eliot's most famous drama, a retelling of the murder of the archbishop of Canterbury

Murder in the Cathedral, written for the Canterbury Festival in 1935, was one of T. S. Eliot's first dramatic achievements, and it remains one of the great plays of the century. It takes as its subject matter the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, depicting the events that led to his assassination, in his own cathedral church, by the knights of Henry II in 1170. Like Greek drama, the play's theme and form are rooted in religion, ritual purgation and renewal, and it was this return to the earliest sources of drama that brought poetry triumphantly back to the English stage at the time.

The theatre is enriched by this poetic play of grave beauty and momentous decision. --The New York Times

The Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot, edited by Professor Frank Kermode, gathers work from Eliot's unrivalled career as a literary and social critic. These thirty-one essays-categorized as essays in generalization, appreciations of individual authors, and social and religious criticism were written over the course of a half century, and include his most famous essays to lesser known works from before 1918. This volume reveals Eliot's original ideas, cogent conclusions, and skill and grace in language.

THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT was born in St Louis, Missouri, in 1888. He moved to England in 1914 and published his first book of poems in 1917. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Eliot died in 1965.

The collected poems of T. S. Eliot, one of the great poets (Robert Pinsky), including The Waste Land, his most celebrated, era-defining poem

Waste Land and Other Poems compiles the crucial work at the heat of the Modernist movement. Along with the title poem, this volume includes The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Gerontion, Ash Wednesday, Sweeney Among the Nightingales, and other selections from Eliot's early and middle work.

This Norton Critical Edition includes:

The first American edition of The Waste Land, with Eliot's notes, joined by Prufrock and Other Poems (1917) and Poems (1920).

Updated and expanded introductory materials and footnotes by Michael North.

Extensive contextual materials on sources for The Waste Land, its composition, and publication history for all three featured collections. Eleven reviews and reactions to Eliot's works include those by Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, and Ralph Ellison.

Five new critical essays examine the themes and legacy of Eliot's hallmark poems alongside eight classic literary critiques.

A chronology and a selected bibliography.

About the Series

Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format--annotated text, contexts, and criticism--helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.

This splendid new edition of T. S. Eliot's landmark poem provides an authoritative 1922 edition of the text, the most vital materials for understanding it, and, for this supremely allusive poem, a collection of essential sources. It also brings together Eliot's most pertinent essays and all the English poems in his earlier books, as well as an illuminating array of reviews and criticism published over the last hundred years. -- Jahan Ramazani, University of Virginia

A selection of the most significant and enduring poems from one of the twentieth century's major writers, chosen and introduced by Vijay Seshadri

T.S. Eliot was a towering figure in twentieth century literature, a renowned poet, playwright, and critic whose work--including The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), The Waste Land (1922), Four Quartets (1943), and Murder in the Cathedral (1935)--continues to be among the most-read and influential in the canon of American literature.

The Essential T.S. Eliot collects Eliot's most lasting and important poetry in one career-spanning volume, now with an introduction from Vijay Seshadri, one of our foremost poets.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

T. S. Eliot's advocacy of impersonality as a literary ideal in Tradition and the Individual Talent had an immeasurable impact on Modernist literature and continues to resonate today. An incisive (and controversial) account of individual artists' relation to their forebears, this essay remains an outstanding work of critical prose.

Chosen by Eliot himself, the poems in this volume represent the poet's most important work before Four Quartets. Included here is some of the most celebrated verse in modern literature--The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Gerontion, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, and Ash Wednesday--as well as many other fine selections from Eliot's early work.

The Waste Land (1922) is a poem by T.S. Eliot. After suffering a nervous breakdown, Eliot took a leave of absence from his job at a London bank to stay with his wife Vivienne at the coastal town of Margate. He worked on the poem during these months before showing an early draft to Ezra Pound, who helped edit the poem toward publication. The Waste Land, dedicated to Pound, includes hundreds of quotations of and allusions to such figures as Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Saint Augustine, Chaucer, Baudelaire, and Whitman, to name only a few.

Divided into five sections-The Burial of the Dead; A Game of Chess; The Fire Sermon; Death by Water; and What the Thunder Said-The Waste Land is a complex poem that translates Eliot's fragile emotional state and increasing dissatisfaction with married life into an apocalyptic vision of postwar England. The poem begins with a meditation on despair before moving to a polyphonic narration by figures on the theme. The third section focuses on death and denial through the lens of eastern and western religions, using Saint Augustine as a prominent figure. Eliot then moves from a brief lyric poem to an apocalyptic conclusion, declaring: He who was living is now dead / We who were living are now dying / With a little patience. Both personal and universal, global in scope and intensely insular, The Waste Land changed the course of literary history, inspiring countless poets and establishing Eliot's reputation as one of the foremost artists of his generation.

With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

Macavity' (the mystery cat ) is one of the best-loved poems from T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats - the inspiration for Cats: The Musical - beloved by generations of children and their parents.

Now, Macavity is given a new life in this stunning picture book with illustrations from Arthur Robins that perfectly convey all the wit and humor of Eliot's creation. Perfect for ages 3+, children (and parents) will love reading aloud about T.S. Eliot's best-loved cat.

To sit alongside other classics such as The Gruffalo, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, and Spot.

When the New York Public Library announced in October 1968 that its Berg Collection had acquired the original manuscript of The Waste Land, one of the most puzzling mysteries of twentieth-century literature was solved. The manuscript was not lost, as had been believed, but had remained among the papers of John Quinn, Eliot's friend and adviser, to whom the poet had sent it in 1922.

If the discovery of the manuscript was startling, its content was even more so: the published version of The Waste Land was considerably shorter than the original. The manuscript pages illuminate how the famously elliptical poem was reduced and edited through the handwritten notes of Ezra Pound; of Eliot's first wife, Vivien; and of Eliot himself. So that this material could be made widely available, the poet's widow, Valerie Eliot, prepared the facsimile edition for publication in 1971, reproducing each page of the original manuscript with a clear transcript, an enlightening introduction, and explanatory notes.

In celebration of the centenary of the poem, published in the United States by Boni & Liveright in 1922, Eliot's manuscript pages are presented in vivid color for the first time. The updated facsimile edition also offers a new appendix--including a sheet of Valerie Eliot's corrections discovered in the Faber archive in 2021--and an insightful afterword from Faber poetry editor Matthew Hollis. Complete with the text of the first published version of The Waste Land, this definitive volume reveals the evolution of a landmark work of the twentieth century and its enduring legacy.

T. S. Eliot was not only one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century--he was also one of the most acute writers on his craft. In On Poetry and Poets, which was first published in 1957, Eliot explores the different forms and purposes of poetry in essays such as The Three Voices of Poetry, Poetry and Drama, and What Is Minor Poetry? as well as the works of individual poets, including Virgil, Milton, Byron, Goethe, and Yeats. As he writes in The Music of Poetry, We must expect a time to come when poetry will have again to be recalled to speech. The same problems arise, and always in new forms; and poetry has always before it . . . an 'endless adventure.'

T.S. Eliot's most famous work, The Waste Land, has been called one of the twentieth century's most important poems. Among his most famous lines are April is the cruellest month and I will show you fear in a handful of dust. The poem falls may be placed alongside other prominent modernist poetry, and is especially remarkable for its abrupt change of speaker, place, and time. The Waste Land is pregnant with the futility and despair that pervaded the literary elite of the post-World War I era.

A monumental event in Eliot scholarship.

Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL, Pegasus Award for Criticism of the Poetry Magazine

This critical edition of T. S. Eliot's Poems establishes a new text of the Collected Poems 1909-1962, rectifying accidental omissions and errors that have crept in during the century since Eliot's astonishing debut, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. As well as the masterpieces, the edition contains the poems of Eliot's youth, which were rediscovered only decades later, others that circulated privately during his lifetime, and love poems from his final years, written for his wife Valerie Eliot.

Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue have provided a commentary that illuminates the imaginative life of each poem. Calling upon Eliot's critical writings, as well as his drafts, letters, and other original materials, they illustrate not only the breadth of Eliot's interests and the range of his writings, but how it was that the author of Gerontion came to write Triumphal March and then Four Quartets. Thanks to the family and friends who recognized Eliot's genius and preserved his writings from an early age, the archival record is exceptionally complete, enabling us to follow in unique detail the progress of a mind that never ceased exploring.

This first volume respects Eliot's decisions by opening with his Collected Poems 1909-1962 as he arranged and issued it, shortly before his death fifty years ago. This is followed by poems uncollected but either written for or suitable for publication, and by a new reading text of the drafts of The Waste Land. The volume concludes with the commentary on all of these poems.

The second volume opens with the two books of verse of other kinds that Eliot issued, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and his translation of St.-John Perse's Anabase. Different again are the verses informal, improper, or clubmanlike. Each of these sections has its own commentary. Finally, pertaining to the entire edition, there is a textual history that contains not only variants from all known drafts and the many printings but also extended passages amounting to hundreds of lines of compelling verse.

The more we know of Eliot, the better.--Ezra Pound