Eliot Now

Over a dozen new volumes of T S Eliot's poetry, prose, and letters have been published since the death of his widow in 2012. This book presents unabashedly fresh approaches to Eliot, while simultaneously guiding readers through the new materials that are available for the first time outside of restricted archives. Eliot, the figurehead of literary modernism, continues to be someone whom critics love to hate (Misogynist! Conservative! Anti-Semite!) and readers love to devour (Profound! Revolutionary! Resonant!). Why does one figure elicit such different responses? Eliot's influence on literary studies and modern poetry is immense, and yet 90% of Eliot scholarship has been written without knowledge of 90% of what Eliot actually wrote in his lifetime, as Ronald Schuchard, the general editor of the Complete Prose, has estimated.

Eliot Now collects new and established voices in Eliot studies at the centenary of The Waste Land to begin to correct that oversight, integrating contemporary critical approaches with careful attention to the newly published materials. Whether grappling with the controversial new two-volume Poems, narrating the experience of opening Eliot's letters in the Emily Hale papers (called the "most famous sealed archive in the world"), or re-reading Eliot works through ecocritical or trans* lenses, Eliot Now shows how this most renowned 20th-century literary figure continues to change the way we read literature today.