The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem

by Matthew Hollis

Overview

A New Statesman, Financial Times, Observer, and Sunday Times Book of the Year

“[An] impressive examination of artistic creation.”—Alex Clark, Guardian

A riveting account of the making of T. S. Eliot’s celebrated poem The Waste Land on its centenary.

Renowned as one of the world’s greatest poems, The Waste Land has been said to describe the moral decay of a world after war and the search for meaning in a meaningless era. It has been labeled the most truthful poem of its time; it has been branded a masterful fake. A century after its publication in 1922, T. S. Eliot’s enigmatic masterpiece remains one of the most influential works ever written, and yet one of the most mysterious.

In a remarkable feat of biography, Matthew Hollis reconstructs the intellectual creation of the poem and brings the material reality of its charged times vividly to life. Presenting a mosaic of historical fragments, diaries, dynamic literary criticism, and illuminating new research, he reveals the cultural and personal trauma that forged The Waste Land through the lives of its protagonists—of Ezra Pound, who edited it; of Vivien Eliot, who sustained it; and of T. S. Eliot himself, whose private torment is woven into the seams of the work. The result is an unforgettable story of lives passing in opposing directions and the astounding literary legacy they would leave behind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324065982
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/09/2024
Pages:	560
Sales rank:	375,258
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Matthew Hollis is the author of Ground Water, Earth House, and Now All Roads Lead to France: A Life of Edward Thomas, a Sunday Times Biography of the Year. He is the poetry editor at Faber & Faber, London, and lives in the United Kingdom.

Table of Contents

Armistice 1

The Waste Land 11

A Biography of a Poem

Acknowledgements 389

Notes on Sources 393

Notes 439

Permissions 484

Index 489

The Waste Land T.S. Eliot Text of the first edition (1922) 501

Editorial Reviews

"Hollis succeeds brilliantly in bringing the literary landscape of the 1920s to life.… [He] turns a complex process of literary composition into a rattling good story. His criticism is personally engaged...and wonderfully compelling as a result."

Sunday Telegraph - Tristram Fane Saunders

"With elegance, wit and...warmth, [Hollis] tells the story of The Waste Land’s difficult birth.… At times the book reads, delightfully, as a group biography of modernism’s bright lights."

Times [UK] - Susannah Goldsborough

"[A] rewarding literary dive into the alchemy of a classic, from Eliot’s leap of courage to Pound’s scorched-earth battle for respect with Poetry magazine in Chicago."

Chicago Tribune - Christopher Borrelli

"[The Waste Land] brings to life the exciting, even overheated, creative environment in which the poem came into being.… Meticulously grounding his account in time and place and paying close attention to the interplay of poetic intuition and critical mind, Hollis succeeds in gripping our attention."

Literary Review - Hilary Davies

"A great work of art takes on a life of its own. This is the strategy equally artful and assessive of Matthew Hollis's superb new study, The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem. The poem is brilliant, infuriating, moody, conflicted, lyrical, fractured, wildly inventive, haunted by tradition, and as full of eroticism as lament. The Waste Land helped to define modernism and lives on vividly into our present day. To tell the life story of this poem, Hollis tells the story of the poet, sometimes minute by minute, conversation by conversation. The moving result—as Whitman would say of his own sweeping poetry—is that 'who touches this [book] touches a man.'"

David Baker

"[Hollis] examines, with amazing forensic diligence, the context and fraught composition of the most famous poem of the 20th century. The clarifying light in each case is exemplary. The celebrated ‘difficulty’ of [Eliot, Pound] and their work was revealed as perhaps not so difficult at all."

William Boyd

"[Matthew Hollis] creates stunning juxtapositions of context and text. A repossession of The Waste Land is the chief effect of reading his book. But the structure of the book is itself a work of art."

Times Literary Supplement - Helen Vendler

"Hollis delves into the deep background from which The Waste Land arose.… There is genuine suspense in the air, as Hollis invites us to listen out for murmurs and rumors, in the poet’s letters of long ago."

The New Yorker - Anthony Lane

★ 10/10/2022

Honoring the centenary of T.S. Eliot’s modernist masterpiece, biographer Hollis (Now All Roads Lead to France) offers an illuminating account of the making of The Waste Land. Searching out the pieces “of the jigsaw puzzle that would become The Waste Land,” Hollis blends rich characterization and historical background to create a vivid picture of the London literary scene from the end of WWI to 1922 that takes in the writers, journals, and publishers that influenced Eliot’s work. Hollis allots great attention to Ezra Pound, who, he argues, is essential in a consideration of Eliot, as the “confluence that existed between the minds of the two poets” was central to Eliot’s work. Hollis also traces Pound’s influence in several of Eliot’s poems and examines in detail how The Waste Land was shaped by Pound’s editorial eye and “perceptive... direction.” The book gains traction when Eliot gets to the actual writing of the poem, as Hollis describes the laborious early drafts and deleted lines, as well as the sections he completed “almost whole, with barely any correction.” Hollis’s sharp prose sings and is poetic in its own right, and images of typeset pages and manuscripts in Eliot’s handwriting help bring the work to life. This fascinating and brilliantly researched history will delight Eliot’s fans. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"Like the 434-line poem, this book immerses the reader in the political, social and cultural themes of the day… [Hollis] weaves a rich body of research into a fast-paced narrative."

New Statesman - Ellen Peirson-Hagger

"[Hollis’s] quest is for all the seeds of intellectual and emotional pressure that shaped the poem. Such is the energy and engagement of Hollis in this task that you find yourself rooting for the emergence of the poem along with Eliot and his supporters, willing it into life as the book progresses... The evolution of those pages...have become folkloric among Eliot’s readers, but still Hollis invests them with fresh life."

Observer - Tim Adams

"Hollis combines a poet’s sharp eye for details with a cultural historian’s grasp of atmosphere… The richness of [his] analysis is evident on every page."

Financial Times - Jason Harding

"An authoritative and beautifully written account of the peculiar alchemy that produced the most influential poem of the twentieth century. This is more than the story of T. S. Eliot's genius: Matthew Hollis reveals how the forces of friendship, love, despair, madness, and ambition shaped The Waste Land. Literary history at its finest."

Heather Clark

★ 11/18/2022

Written in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the publication of what is generally considered the most significant English-language poem of the 20th century, this painstakingly researched and documented account is rich in detail about not only the creation of The Waste Land, but also the literary landscape of the time when it was written. Poet, editor, and author Hollis (Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas) begins with an account of the unrest in Europe after World War I, when the poem was composed, and juxtaposes Eliot's life and literary efforts against that backdrop. Eliot's unhappy first marriage figures prominently; it was a major influence on his health and work. His wife's instability and resulting marital stress led to the mental health crisis during which he worked extensively on The Waste Land. A key figure in this account is Ezra Pound, who worked closely with Eliot in refining the lengthy poem and advanced the careers of other authors such as James Joyce while working on his own magnum opus, The Cantos. VERDICT Highly recommended for readers interested in the details behind the creation of this literary landmark and the times in which it was composed.—Denise J. Stankovics

Library Journal