T. S. Eliot died on January 4, 1965. His widow, Valerie Eliot, spent the later years of her life—she died on November 9, 2012—establishing her husband’s archive. The first fruit of this work was the publication in 1971 of her edition of the original drafts of “The Waste Land.” This was followed by the publication in 1988 of the first volume of The Letters of T. S. Eliot, which she edited. A revised and much extended version of that volume appeared in 2011, with Hugh Haughton as co-editor. The fifth volume of the letters is about to be published. Meanwhile, in 2006, Mrs. Eliot commissioned The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot. That was thought of at first as a scholarly print edition, of which Johns Hopkins University Press would do an electronic edition afterwards. But it was decided by the publishers, for reasons not known to me, that they would first do an online edition in eight volumes, and, later on, a limited print edition based on those. The eight separate online volumes will then be integrated into a fully searchable web platform. The first two volumes of the eight have now been published online. Two more volumes will be out next year, the remaining four in 2016–2017. Students and faculty in every subscribing university, college, and library will have immediate access to the volumes as they appear, which they can download on their iPads or other gadgets. The editors inform us that the
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Eliot in full
Review of The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot:
The Critical Edition, Volume 1: Apprentice Years, 1905–1918, edited by Jewel Spears Brooker & Ronald Schuchard & The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot:
The Critical Edition, Volume 2: The Perfect Critic, 1919–1926, edited by Anthony Cuda & Ronald SchuchardThis article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 33 Number 4, on page 77
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