"This study offers a rhetorical analysis of how the young T. S. Eliot created a new voice and targeted a modern audience in the poems of his youthful notebook, published in 1996 as Inventions of the March Hare. By following Eliot's artistic development and intellectual maturation, the author explores, by chronological steps, how a young man who writes uninspired doggerel transformed himself-in twenty months-into the author of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.""--

Presents over fifty poems written by the author in his twenties, including early drafts of famous poems, and extensive critical notes on the works.

Late in his life T. S. Eliot, when asked if his poetry belonged in the tradition of American literature, replied: “I’d say that my poetry has obviously more in common with my distinguished contemporaries in America than with anything written in my generation in England. That I’m sure of. . . . In its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America.” In T. S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet, James Miller offers the first sustained account of Eliot’s early years, showing that the emotional springs of his poetry did indeed come from America. Miller challenges long-held assumptions about Eliot’s poetry and his life. Eliot himself always maintained that his poems were not based on personal experience, and thus should not be read as personal poems. But Miller convincingly combines a reading of the early work with careful analysis of surviving early correspondence, accounts from Eliot’s friends and acquaintances, and new scholarship that delves into Eliot’s Harvard years. Ultimately, Miller demonstrates that Eliot’s poetry is filled with reflections of his personal experiences: his relationships with family, friends, and wives; his sexuality; his intellectual and social development; his influences. Publication of T. S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet marks a milestone in Eliot scholarship. At last we have a balanced portrait of the poet and the man, one that takes seriously his American roots. In the process, we gain a fuller appreciation for some of the best-loved poetry of the twentieth century.

Julius's critically acclaimed study (looking both at the detail of Eliot's deployment of anti-Semitic discourse and at the role it played in his greater literary undertaking) has provoked a reassessment of Eliot's work among poets, scholars, critics and readers, which will invigorate debate for some time to come.

The inspiration for the iconic musical Cats, T. S. Eliot's classic and delightful collection of poetry about cats. These lovable cat poems were written by T. S. Eliot for his godchildren and continue to delight children and adults alike. This collection is a curious and artful homage to felines young and old, merry and fierce, small and unmistakably round. This is the ultimate gift for cat and poetry lovers.

In two highly anticipated volumes, the correspondence of the twentieth century's eminent man of letters, from youth to early manhood

The first volume of Eliot's correspondence covers his childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, through 1922, when he married and settled in England. Volume two covers the time period of Eliot's publication of The Hallow Men and his developing ideas about poetry.