To mark the centenary of Valerie Eliot’s birth, on 17 August 1926, we reproduce here John Haffenden’s essay on Valerie, featured in volume five of The Letters of T. S. Eliot.
The Letters of T. READ
The Poetry Society of America and the T. S. Eliot Foundation are pleased to announce that Daniel Schonning is the winner of the 2026 Four Quartets Prize for his collection As When Waking (University of Chicago Press, 2025).
Selected by judges Paisley Rekdal, Charif Shanahan, and Brian Teare. READ
Volume 3 of those letters collected online begins with an apology. Eliot writes to Natalie A. Duddington on 5 January 1926:
READ‘[I] am writing immediately to explain to you the position with regard to your translation of Bunin’s ‘A Night at Sea’ which I accepted for the Criterion […] During the whole of the summer, negotiations were proceeding for the transfer of the publication of the Criterion from Mr Cobden-Sanderson to Messrs Faber & Gwyer Limited.’
Marylebone Theatre is hosting a programme of music and spoken word featuring readings from Four Quartets.
The programme weaves music by Purcell, Haydn, Beethoven, Dowland, Locke, and Britten with two poems from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, read by A. N. READ
READ‘This volume contains nothing new except a set of poems called ‘The Hollow Men’, which represents an even more advanced stage of the condition of demoralization already given expression in The Waste Land; the last of these poems — the disconnected thoughts of a man lying awake at night — consists merely of the barest statement of a melancholy self-analysis mixed with a fragment of the Lord’s Prayer and a morose parody of ‘Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush’.
The tenth annual T. S. Eliot Lecture at the Abbey Theater, Dublin will be delivered by Colm Tóibín.
The evening will be introduced by the Abbey Theatre’s artistic director Caitríona McLaughlin, interspersed with readings by Cathy Belton, and followed by a conversation with James Shapiro. READ
This June marks 110 years since T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was first published, in the June 1915 edition of Harriet Monroe’s Poetry magazine, a milestone in the history of poetry in English. To celebrate this anniversary, the actor Freddie Fox recites the poem (having memorised it) and chats with James Lever of Dead Poets Live about Prufrock and learning poetry by heart.
2025 marks one hundred years since T. S. Eliot began his career in publishing. On 23rd April 1925, Eliot was invited to join the newly formed publishing house of Faber & Gwyer as one of its Directors by the firm’s Chairman, Geoffrey Faber. READ
Next month the London Review of Books will host an event to mark the 100th anniversary of T. S Eliot entering the world of publishing.
On 23 April 1925, Eliot was officially invited by Geoffrey Faber to join the newly founded publishing house of Faber & Gwyer. READ
