by T. S. Eliot
It is a chronic malady that Mr. Eliot’s poems are dissipated through numerous emaciated tomes, and that some have not yet been clothed with the respectability of cloth bindings. Poems 1909–1925 is the only collection so far; but, as the title would suggest, this does not include Mr. Eliot’s verse subsequent to 1925, or any of his experiments in dramatic form. To our occasional nagging, Mr. Eliot has invariably replied that if he did not have to read so many manuscripts he would have more time for writing poetry. To which our reply has always been that after all we make it possible for him to keep body and soul together, and he ought to take the rough with the smooth. He has also observed that he was not ready; that the Poems 1909–1925 summed up one phase, and that no further collection could be made until another phase had been more clearly defined.
What is, however, certain, is: this volume contains in the first part all the poems in the previous volume, and in the second everything written subsequently that Mr. Eliot wishes to preserve—including Sweeney Agonistes and the Choruses from The Rock—with the exception of Murder in the Cathedral and certain nonsense verses which will in due course have a proper book to themselves (see page 69 [announcing Mr. Eliot’s Book of Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats As Recited to Him by the Man in White Spats]). Here, then, in definitive form and in a convenient volume, is Mr. Eliot’s poetical work for a period of 25 years. Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d.
US 1936: Collected Poems 1909–1935 (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1936). Set from proofs of 1936 which contained errors not in the final Faber text (TSE to Donald Brace, 22 May 1936).
Sesame: The Waste Land and Other Poems (Faber, 1940; frequently reprinted with the same title after the “Sesame” series was discontinued). Text as 1936 except where noted. “This Sesame volume consists of a selection of poems from Collected Poems, made by Anne Ridler with the author’s consent, and designed to constitute an introduction to Mr. Eliot’s poetical work”, Books by T. S. Eliot flyer, c. 1948. All lifetime and some later impressions have bold numerals before the poems, either on the section-title page or above the text itself: 1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 2. Preludes 3. Gerontion 4. Sweeney Among the Nightingales 5. The Waste Land 6. Ash-Wednesday 7. Journey of the Magi 8. Marina 9. Landscapes [I–III] 10. Two Choruses from “The Rock” [I, X]. In early printings the contents page is headed “From COLLECTED POEMS (1909–1935)”, and although the contents appear not all to have been set directly from this, the text is as 1936 except where noted. In 1998, also under the title The Waste Land and Other Poems, Frank Kermode edited for Penguin in the US a different selection likewise ending with The Waste Land, with a very inaccurate text in which, for instance, a version of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 96–98 appears again in place of 107–110.
Later Poems: Later Poems 1925–1935 (1941). Complementing Poems 1909–1925: the two books together contain the whole of 1936. Contents: Ash-Wednesday, Journey of the Magi, A Song for Simeon, Animula, Marina, Sweeney Agonistes, Coriolan, Eyes that last I saw in tears, The wind sprang up at four o’clock, Five-Finger Exercises, Landscapes, Lines for an Old Man, Choruses from “The Rock”, Burnt Norton. Text follows 1936 except where noted. A bound proof (McCue collection) is titled Poems 1925–1935. TSE to his secretary, Miss Sheldon, 10 Feb 1941: “I cannot think of any better title for the new volume in the Faber library than the one suggested—‘Later Poems’. It at least leaves open the possibility of a third volume to be called ‘Last Poems’ and perhaps a fourth volume of ‘Posthumous Poems’.”
US 1943: Four Quartets (NY, 1943). For the destruction of most of the defective first impression, see Gallup.
1944: Four Quartets (Faber, 1944), following the separate pamphlet publications of East Coker (EC), Burnt Norton (BN), The Dry Salvages (DS) and Little Gidding (LG).
Guild: Selected Poems (Guild Books, Vienna, 1946). Selection differs from the later Penguin / Sel Poems. Geoffrey Faber to Allen Lane of Penguin, 13 May 1947:
After the war Eliot himself prepared for Austrian publication, through Guild Books, an edition of his Selected Poems · · · The only differences between the Selected Poems and the present edition of the Collected Poems are as follows:
Omitted from the Selected Poems [Guild]:—
In the section called “Prufrock”: two short passages, Hysteria (which is prose) and Conversation Galante (which I think he regarded as not up to the level of the others).
In “Poems 1920”:—“Four short poems in French”.
The four “Ariel Poems”; namely Journey of the Magi, A Song for Simeon, Animula and Marina.
The so-called “Minor Poems”; namely Eyes that last I saw in tears, The wind sprang up at four o’clock, Five-Finger Exercises, Landscapes and Lines for an Old Man.
Poèmes: Poèmes 1910–1930 tr. Pierre Leyris and others, with notes by John Hayward (Éditions du Seuil, Paris, [1947]). Gallup D87. For Hayward’s notes, see “Hayward, John” in Bibliography of the present edition. Gallup 1970 36: “The poems are dated on the basis of information supplied by T. S. Eliot.” For the possibility of including Vers pour la Foulque, see headnote to that poem in Noctes Binanianæ.
Penguin / Sel Poems: Selected Poems (Penguin, 1948, then Faber, 1954); this designation is used when the texts are identical. “A selection by the Author”, according to the redesigned cover of the 1951 reprint of Penguin. Contents: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Portrait of a Lady, Preludes, Rhapsody on a Windy Night, Gerontion, Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar, Sweeney Erect, A Cooking Egg, The Hippopotamus, Whispers of Immortality, Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service, Sweeney Among the Nightingales, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash-Wednesday, Journey of the Magi, A Song for Simeon, Animula, Marina, Choruses from “The Rock” (I–III, VII, IX, X). Text follows 1936 except where noted.
To C. Day Lewis, 27 July 1944, on anthologies: “I should like to be able to say ‘I am willing to be represented by this poem (or group of poems) for (say) five years; but by that time I may cease to consider your selection representative, so that if you wish to keep the book in print you must ask my permission again’.”
Sel Poems 1954: Selected Poems (Faber, 1954). Text follows Penguin except where noted (probably being set from the 2nd imp.).
Sel Poems pbk: Selected Poems (1961). First Faber paperback edition. Text follows Sel Poems 1954 except where noted.
Undergrad. Poems: The Undergraduate Poems [Harvard, 1949]. Reprinted, without authorisation, from Harvard Advocate Nov 1948.
Poems Written in Early Youth (Stockholm, 1950). Ed. John Hayward. Twelve copies only.
Poems Written in Early Youth (1967). Ed. John Hayward, with a Note by Valerie Eliot.
US 1952: The Complete Poems and Plays (NY, 1952). Poems do not each begin on a new page. No part-title pages divide the chronological sections, and this affects the positioning of titles and epigraphs (this not being noted in the Textual History).
Mardersteig: limited editions of Four Quartets and The Waste Land printed by Giovanni Mardersteig at the Officina Bodoni, Verona, respectively in 1960 and 1962. Of The Waste Land, TSE wrote: “I think it may be taken that the recent limited edition is the standard text. I have made one or two corrections in the notes in that edition, and Mr. Mardersteig, the publisher of that limited edition, suggested corrections in the quotations from Dante based on a more authentic text than the one I had used before”, Woodward 264. Problems became apparent later, however: see Textual History.
1963: Collected Poems 1909–1962 (Faber, 1963). Incorporating poems later than 1936: the last three Quartets; The Cultivation of Christmas Trees (added to the Ariel Poems); and the five “Occasional Verses”.
US 1963: Collected Poems 1909–1962 (Harcourt Brace, 1963).
1969: Complete Poems and Plays (Faber, 1969).
WLFacs: The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts including the Annotations of Ezra Pound ed. Valerie Eliot (Faber, 1971).
1974: Second edition of 1963, reset.
Composition FQ: The Composition of
“Four Quartets” by Helen Gardner (Faber, 1978).
March Hare: Inventions of the March Hare ed. Christopher Ricks (Faber, 1996).
Recent copies of the British Collected Poems 1909–1962 and Selected Poems, and of the American Collected Poems 1909–1962, have also been consulted.
For editions, proofs and copies of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, see Textual History headnote for that volume.
4. PROOFS AND ASSOCIATION COPIES
The following proofs and association copies have been collated. The text of each is that of the published edition except where noted. Proofs are listed first, followed by published copies.
1932 proof (Joseph Baillargeon collection): bound proof (small format), with brown paper wrapper marked “Mr. Eliot” and, in his hand, “Corrected TSE 9. iv. 32”. (Apparently the copy sold at Sotheby’s, 18 Dec 1980.)
1936 proof (King’s): bound proof, with TSE’s emendations beginning at The Waste Land.
Hayward’s 1936 proof (King’s): bound proof with corrections and annotations by Hayward. Selected annotations are recorded in the Textual History.
1944 proof (photocopy, Faber archive): unbound page proofs of Four Quartets, dated by printer 26 May 1944 and marked “Corrected TSE 2. 6. 44”. Original sold at Bloomsbury Book Auctions, 6 Sept 1990.
US 1952 proof (U. Maryland): bound proof, uncorrected.
Sel Poems 1954 proof (photocopy, Faber archive): unbound page proofs corrected by TSE. Original sold Bloomsbury Book Auctions 6 Sept 1990.
1963 proof (McCue collection): bound proof, uncorrected.
Curtis’s 1936: Geoffrey Curtis’s copy with emendations and an addition by TSE. Another hand has erroneously pencilled “Proof copy” on the front endpaper. Dated 25 x 38, probably by Curtis. None of the emendations was made in the 2nd impression of 1937. (Christie’s, 23 Nov 2009.)
Hayward’s 1925 (King’s): John Hayward’s copy, with the respective poems dated by TSE. On the front free endpaper TSE wrote: “2 Jan 1943. The pencilled dates after each poem in this copy of Poems 1909–25 are, at the date above, notes written in my own hand. These are the dates for the respective poems, to the best of my knowledge and belief. I do not guarantee their accuracy; and it is possible that they may subsequently be altered by some other hand either in order to correct them, or mischievously to falsify the record. T. S. Eliot.”
Hodgson’s 1932 (Beinecke): Ralph Hodgson’s copy, inscribed by TSE on 5 Apr 1932.
Isaacs’s US 1920 (McCue collection): Professor J. Isaacs’s copy with notes on dates and places of composition pencilled by him on contents page and at the foot of some poems. Isaacs was a literary scholar, film critic and occasional contributor to the Criterion.
Morley’s US 1920 (King’s): Frank Morley’s copy, formerly TSE’s. With emendations and notes on dates and places of composition pencilled in by TSE. Some dates (not noted here) are demonstrably inaccurate, because later than first publication. However, on the front pastedown is written “T. S. Eliot”, which appears to be an early ownership (rather than a presentation) signature, and other annotations appear to be of the same period. The deletion of full stops at the end of each epigraph (and at the end of “THE END.”) gives the impression that it may have been marked up for a future edition. Morley left Faber to work in America in 1939, so it is possible that this copy was a parting gift from TSE.
Quinn’s AraVP (Beinecke): presentation copy to John Quinn, in which TSE has written out La Figlia Che Piange. Quinn to TSE 25 May 1921: “I should have written to you months ago to thank you for writing that poem in the vellum copy of Rodker’s edition of your poems.”
[Quinn’s Boni & Liveright (untraced): John Quinn’s copy of Boni, sold at the Anderson Galleries, NY, Nov 1923, described in the sale catalogue as “Editorial copy”.]
Rodker’s 1917 (Texas): copy of Prufrock and Other Observations used by John Rodker when typesetting AraVP. On the half-title page, TSE has written: “I have no doubt that this is the copy Rodker used. The two quotations, from Lucian Virgil, are certainly in my hand. With cordial wishes, to Frederic Prokosch, T. S. Eliot 15. v. 33”. The supplied quotations are the epigraphs to Mr. Apollinax and La Figlia Che Piange.
Thayer’s AraVP (Houghton): Lucy Thayer’s copy of AraVP, annotated by TSE. Some of the annotations have been erased.
TSE’s 1949 (Valerie Eliot collection): 1936 13th imp., lightly annotated by TSE.
VE’s 1951 (Valerie Eliot collection): 1936 14th imp. (1951), annotated by Valerie Eliot, probably beginning while she worked as TSE’s secretary. Alongside “jew” in Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar, she wrote “cap”. Alongside The Waste Land [III] 277–78 (“Weialala leia | Wallala leialala”) she wrote “Wagner | Götterdämmerung | Read Wagner’s text”. The last three words may have been an instruction to herself, or may indicate that this copy was to be consulted when checking future editions and that the lines were to conform to Wagner’s published text. If the latter, it indicates that TSE was prepared to change his wording where it was in error, as in his Note to “C.i.f.” in The Waste Land [III] 211.
Virginia program (U. Virginia): see headnote to the Textual History of Gerontion.
Washington copy 1954 (Washington U., St. Louis): copy of 1936 15th imp. (1954) marked up by TSE and Faber’s production editor David Bland, with TSE’s note on the front free endpaper: “This copy to be used in preparing next edition. Return to T.S.E.” See also ts Occasional Verses (which was sold with this volume). Although the dates on the title page are emended from “1909–1935” to “1909–1962”, his earliest emendations appear to be those such as the accents in the epigraph to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock made in pencil which were adopted by 1936 17th imp. in 1959 (here abbreviated to CP 1959). Next come the emendations in black ink, which were adopted in 1936 18th imp. in 1961 (here CP 1961). Later emendations are in pencil, blue ballpoint and pencil again. In the Contents, TSE added dates in ballpoint to the four Ariel Poems of 1936 (also inserting “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees—1954”); to Triumphal March (though this date, 1931, was not printed); and to the section heading “Choruses from ‘The Rock’”. Still in ballpoint, he added the section heading “Four Quartets”, the names of the last three Quartets and the dates of all four; the section heading “Occasional Poems” and the titles and dates: “Defense of the Islands—1940” (spelt so), “A Note on War Poetry—1942”, “To the Indians who died in Africa—1943” and “A Dedication—1959–1962”. Between the last two he then added “To Walter de la Mare—1948”. In pencil he changed “Occasional Poems” to “Occasional Verses” (with a chevron beneath and “notes first”, these then deleted). In blue ink he later deleted the dates of these poems. In pencil, beneath “Minor Poems”, he changed the title of Lines to a Duck in a Park to Lines to a Duck in the Park, before going on to re-number the pages from The Cultivation of Christmas Trees through to A Dedication. In addition he re-numbered the pages in the book itself, pencilling new numbers beginning on the half-title “Unfinished Poems” through to the blank verso after Choruses from “The Rock”. (These numbers were eventually rendered incorrect by the addition of an extra flyleaf, so that the title page was counted as [5] rather than [3]. A note in red crayon in an unknown hand accordingly cautions: “Reader to check the page nos—will be two on from here.”)
At a late stage, four typed slips were pasted into the Notes on the Waste Land (over Notes to 63, 64, 411 and 427), attempting to rectify the quotations from Dante. On the first three TSE has written in blue ink “Cf. etc as before”, and on the last “V. etc. as before”. The quotation in Note 427 adopts the wording recommended by Giovanni Mardersteig when he sent his proofs to Faber on 27 June 1961 (see Textual History of the Notes on the Waste Land).
Although the “new edition” was originally to be called Collected Poems 1909–1960, the latest emendations are probably later than 19 Apr 1962. TSE wrote on that day to Alan Clodd accepting that he had been wrong about “C.i.f.” in the Notes on the Waste Land. Th
e typed list of TSE’s books prepared for the verso of the section-title page and now accompanying Washington copy 1954 is dated 1 Mar 1963.
TSE’s emendations were first adopted in 1959 in the 17th imp. of 1936 (here CP 1959); in 1961 in the 18th imp. of 1936 (here CP 1961); and in 1963:
Prufrock and Other Observations epigraph rewritten (black ink and then pencil, adopted CP 1959; new errors CP 1961, 1963)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock emendations to epigraph (two in pencil, adopted CP 1959; five in black ink, adopted CP 1961; further emended 1963)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, instruction to change square brackets to round brackets throughout (later pencil, adopted 1963)
Portrait of a Lady III 25 ^ 26 line space added (ballpoint, adopted 1963)
Preludes I 12 ^ 13 and II 5 ^ 6 line spaces added (both later pencil, adopted 1963)
The “Boston Evening Transcript” 7 (later pencil, adopted 1963)
Mr. Apollinax epigraph (later pencil)
Gerontion 8 (ballpoint, adopted 1963)
Gerontion 28 (different ballpoint not used elsewhere in the vol, adopted CP 1959)
Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar 23 (ballpoint, adopted 1963)
The Waste Land [I] 37 (black ink, adopted CP 1961)
The Waste Land [I] 74, [II] 85 and [III] 173 (all pencil, adopted CP 1961)
The Waste Land [V] 376 ^ 377 (pencil and ballpoint, adopted CP 1961)
Notes on the Waste Land 63 (black ink, adopted CP 1961; however this correction was later obscured by a typed slip with blue ink, the text of which was adopted by 1963, but which did not include an accent on sì)
