The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem
£10.70£12.30 (-13%)
** Chosen as a New Statesman, Financial Times, Observer and Sunday Times Book of the Year **
A riveting account of the making of T. S. Eliot’s celebrated poem The Waste Land on its centenary.
‘A rattling good story’ Sunday Telegraph
‘A work of art’ Times Literary Supplement
The Waste Land has been called the ‘World’s Greatest Poem’. It has been labelled the most truthful poem of its time; it has been branded a masterful fake. More than a century after its publication in 1922, T. S. Eliot’s enigmatic masterpiece remains one of the most influential works ever written.
In a remarkable feat of biography, Matthew Hollis reconstructs the creation of the poem and brings the material reality of its charged times vividly to life. He reveals the cultural and personal trauma that forged The Waste Land through the lives of its protagonists – Ezra Pound, who edited it; Vivien Eliot, who sustained it; and 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.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Faber & Faber, Main edition (3 Aug. 2023) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 544 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 0571297226 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0571297221 |
| Dimensions | 12.9 x 3.3 x 19.8 cm |
by Christopher B.
Simply the best analysis of perhaps the most important poem of the 20th Century. Well written and researched.
Chris Bell
by carole wilden
Purchased for husband he loves it
Also arrived very quickly
by John Soutter
There is neither an unnecessary word nor detail in this book. It takes me back to when at school I first read and admired Eliot’s The Wasteland. Pound will always remain despite his shameless behaviour in WWII il miglior poeta. Read The Cantos!
by Richard Fairley
While well-written and generally interesting ( as, indeed, any decent book covering this fascinating period in English literature is bound to be ), potential readers must be advised that this is certainly not ‘A Biography of a Poem’ ( I suspect ‘publisher-ese’ there! ) but would more accurately be subtitled ‘The Birth/ Genesis of a Poem’. Rather than any attempt at the ‘life’ of Eliot’s masterpiece, it is rather the documentation of the contextual milieu out of which ‘The Waste Land’ arose. There is far more material concerning Eliot’s contemporaries ( ie. Pound, Lewis, Joyce, Woolf ) and their doings as there is about the poem itself. I had hoped for more exegesis of the poem though, to be fair, such is not promised. If you are looking for the ‘origin story’ of ‘The Waste Land’, then this is certainly for you; however, be aware that by the time the poem has been completed within the narrative, the book effectively closes.
by Amazon Customer
Binding was of poor quality and several pages were loose
by Hoeshack
When I first started reading this biography of TS Eliot’s The Wasteland, I was unsure. But then it clicked. The first half, much like the poem, is a patchwork, fragments, of Eliot’s (and to an almost equal degree, Ezra Pound’s) personal and cultural experiences that would ultimately contribute to what would become, to my mind, the greatest poem ever written.
The second half is a dissection of the poem itself.
I have read this poem hundreds of times. I have poured over its meaning and consulted most of its references in an effort to understand it more and more.
Even so, there are still much I have learned from this amazing book.
True understanding of the poem, in my opinion, can only really come from what the reader takes from it. It will always mean something different to other people. That is the genius of true art and literature. But Matthew Hollis does a fantastic job of shining a spotlight on how much of Eliot’s emotion and personal crisis he laid on paper to give us what we still read and love 100 years later.
Bravo.
by L. McG.
What were TS Eliot, Ezra Pound et al. doing in the years leading up to Waste Land? Meticulously researched and well put together.
by Souffee
Well written summery of Eliot’s background plus a technical, poetical explanation of the Waste Land; also incorporating the major literary figures in Elliot’s circle like Ezra Pound etc. It is also clear that Eliot’s occasional drift into anti Semitic passages are ugly and reprehensible. There is no attempt to excuse them, or him. It’s odd that someone so essentially an American who remained one should put on the mantle of an Englishman. He even became a naturalised Briton and an avowed Anglican. He did write though that US writers were “immature” due it being a new country. Maybe that’s the answer to his adopting Englishness?