Eliot at Faber

Late in 1924, when Geoffrey Faber was looking to recruit senior staff for his new publishing venture – Faber & Gwyer – the name of T. S. Eliot was suggested to him ‘with warm commendation’ by Eliot’s old friend Charles Whibley. Faber was looking not only ‘for a writer with some reputation among the young, who could attract promising authors of the younger generation’, but ‘a man who combines literary gifts with business instincts’.

‘... a man who combines literary gifts with business instincts’

Eliot fitted both aspects of this job description admirably; for the next forty years he was to be one of the most remarkable publishers in London. In his first four years at Faber & Gwyer, he gave invaluable support to Geoffrey Faber in his battles with the other shareholders to transform the firm into a literary publishing house. This phase was successfully resolved with the creation of Faber & Faber in the spring of 1929.

Much of Eliot’s time in these early years of the firm was inevitably taken up with his continuing role as editor of The Criterion, assisted by various secretaries (the most notable of whom, in the mid-1930s, was the poet Anne Ridler).

Eliot’s role as Faber’s poetry editor is perhaps better known. He was determined, in his first few years as an editor, not to be rushed into publishing what he described, turning down one collection, as ‘sound, earnest and educated verse’. That was in 1930 when he was about to begin publishing Auden, the first of his new poets; and he added that ‘it would be better policy for Faber and Faber to make a bad blunder in publishing the wrong poet, than to blur their reputation by publishing too many respectable ones’.

… it became his first bestseller as a publisher.

Undoubtedly the most successful non-fiction title that Eliot ever published came in 1930 with Frank Morrison’s Who Moved the Stone? A critical look at the plausibility of the account of the arrest and execution of Jesus in the Gospels, Eliot found it ‘as absorbing as a detective story’. The book-buying public agreed: it became his first bestseller as a publisher.

Along with other directors and senior editors Eliot attended the celebrated Wednesday meetings of the Faber ‘book committee’ which reviewed the prospects of new manuscripts. Each member of the Committee had their own area of expertise, and a ‘list’ of books which they guided through a well-oiled publishing programme, from receipt of manuscript to eventual publication. In addition to poetry and verse drama, T. S. Eliot’s ‘list’ covered a range of non-fiction, from literary criticism to religion; and he was responsible for monitoring foreign-language publications.