The earliest surviving letter from T. S. Eliot was written in Gloucester, Massachusetts in June 1898. In the letter, addressed to his “Papa”, 9-year old Eliot writes of the coolness of the house in the morning, a broken microscope, butterfly and spider specimens, and hunting for birds with his sister, Charlotte. READ
An embroidery made by a young T. S. Eliot hinted at things to come. The embroidery, made in 1894, shows a ribbon-collared cat ready to pounce on a ball of wool. It’s believed Eliot first put pen to paper with his cats in a 1931 letter to his young godson, Tom Faber, who had written to Eliot about his cat. READ
During and shortly after the Second World War, T. S. Eliot was invited by the British Council to give lectures, poetry readings and open book exhibitions abroad. The visits were seen as a form of ‘cultural warfare’ at a time when much of Europe was at war. READ
In January 1948, T. S. Eliot was awarded the Order of Merit; in a letter congratulating him, W. H. Auden remarked ‘Now the next thing shall be the Nobel Prize’. Auden’s foretelling came true some months later when Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on 4th November 1948. READ
On Tuesday 16 May 2017, Ronald Schuchard gave the University of London International Programmes’ inaugural 1858 Charter Lecture, ‘Eliot in the Wartime Classroom, 1916–1919’. The lecture is reproduced here in full to coincide with the University of London’s publication of the lecture. READ
