The Letters of T. S. Eliot Volume 2: 1923-1925

T.S. Eliot's widow has been working on her husband's letters for three decades, and this is the second of five volumes, for the first of which she won the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize. The material has been assembled from collections, libraries, sale rooms, archives and private sources all over the world, and Valerie Eliot has also drawn extensively upon her own archive in London. From the start of the period covered by this volume, the Eliots entered upon several years of anxiety and financial hardship. The strains of his job at Lloyds Bank, with virtually every evening and weekend spent writing, added to the pressures on the marriage, and on their health. It was in these circumstances that, as the letters show, Eliot wrote "Sweeney Agonistes" and "The Hollow Men". He also began to be drawn to the religious life, and at the end of the period covered by this volume he was baptized and confirmed in the Church of England, a step which shocked or alienated many admirers. In 1925 Eliot had left the bank after ten years to join the new publishers, Faber and Gwyer, and in 1927 he became a British citizen.