The women who made TS Eliot
Accounts of the poet’s brutal rejections of Mary Trevelyan and Emily Hale
shed light on a man obsessed by posterity and guilt.
By Margaret Drabble
"This year marks the centenary of one of the most celebrated poems in the English language, TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, and it has been marked by many tributes to the poet’s work (including Ralph Fiennes’ powerfully intelligent reading of Four Quartets) and several examinations of his problematic life. Under consideration here are studies of two women who were very important to him, the New Englander Emily Hale and the thoroughly English Mary Trevelyan."
TS Eliot © 2022 Barbara Gibson for New Statesman
By Margaret Drabble
"This year marks the centenary of one of the most celebrated poems in the English language, TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, and it has been marked by many tributes to the poet’s work (including Ralph Fiennes’ powerfully intelligent reading of Four Quartets) and several examinations of his problematic life. Under consideration here are studies of two women who were very important to him, the New Englander Emily Hale and the thoroughly English Mary Trevelyan."
TS Eliot © 2022 Barbara Gibson for New Statesman
