Valerie Eliot’s Centenary

 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.

 

 

Valerie Eliot: Editing the Letters

 

The Letters of T. READ

Guide to the Online Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 3: 1926-1927

Volume 3 of those letters collected online begins with an apology. Eliot writes to Natalie A. Duddington on 5 January 1926:

‘[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.’

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The Fall of a Sparrow: Vivien Eliot’s Life and Writings

The Fall of a Sparrow, a new work on the life and writings of Vivien Eliot by Ann Pasternak-Slater, is published by Faber & Faber today. Based on a rich repository of primary evidence, much only recently uncovered, it corrects the accidental inaccuracies and deliberate distortions that have circulated around one of Bloomsbury’s most gossiped-about, enigmatic couples, while unveiling fascinating new discoveries that give a more balanced understanding of both partners. READ

The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The War Years, 1940−1946

 

This month sees the publication of The sixth volume of The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot covering The war years, 1940-1946. The volume, published online by The Johns Hopkins University Press, includes twenty-seven works that were previously unpublished and a further thirty-eight that were unrecorded in Donald Gallup’s bibliography and are likely to be unfamiliar to Eliot’s readers. READ