Eliot After The Waste Land

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The second volume of Robert Crawford's comprehensive biography of a revolutionary modernist poet draws on extensive new sources. This meticulously crafted portrait completes the narrative begun in Young Eliot, utilizing significant correspondence, including letters unsealed in 2020 that reveal a long-term love affair with Emily Hale. This volume, Eliot After 'The Waste Land', chronicles the poet's life after achieving fame, detailing his emotional struggles during the 1920s and 1930s and his experiences as a firewatcher in wartime London. Crawford delves into the events that influenced Eliot's masterpieces, including his religious conversion, his role at Faber and Faber, and his tumultuous relationships, notably with Vivien Haigh-Wood and his later marriage to Valerie Fletcher. The biography presents Eliot not merely as a literary figure but as a complex human being—husband, lover, widower, banker, editor, playwright, and publisher—striving to create art amid personal turmoil. Through this lens, Crawford illuminates the life of an epoch-defining poet grappling with both external and internal challenges.