Update Feb 27, 2007

T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land
Chronology, Handouts,  and Links

Chronology |  Texts and Annotations | Structure and Drafts | Criticism  and Study Guides On-Line

Much of this chronology is derived from Gordon, Lyndall.  "The Waste Land Manuscript." American Literature 45 (January 1974) 557-70.  Rpt. in Critical Essays on T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land by Lois A Cuddy and David H. Hirsch.  Boston: GK Hall, 1991. Also partially rpt. in The Norton Critical Edition of The Waste Land.   Additional chronological adjustments come from Larence Rainey's study of the various papers used  in  Revisiting the Waste Land (2005) and from James E. Miller's T.S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet (2005)
 

Poetry and Personal Life
 Prose
1914
  • Eliot writes "The Death of St. Narcissus" (Gordon sees this as first poem using desert imagery of Part V of WL.)
1915-1918
  • Eliot writes several fragments which introduce themes of "the threatening wife, the metropolitain enviornment" (Gordon)
  • May 1915 "Death of St. narcissus" written in Oxford  (I. 25-9--"shadow of red rock" from this poem) Rainey
  • "The Death of the Duchess" wr. Sept 1916 (Rainey), shown to Pound by 1918 (Gordon) later included in the WL MS
  • 1917 -- starts working at Lloyd's Bank
  • "Elegy," also written at this time, conects up with WL III "the river sweats" (Gordon)
  • 1918-- "Dans le Restaurant" has drowning scene similar to WL IV (Gordon)
  • 1918-1919--Giving lectures on the hsitory of lit
1919
  • January -- word comes of TSE's father's death ("The king my father's death")
  • May -- Poems published by Hogarth Press
  • May -- Eliot writes "Gerontion"  Gordon sees this poem as the turning point that transformed a batch of fragments into a unified poem. New themes in G include:
    • main character on a religious quest whch is failing
    • personal struggle seen against historical background
    • spiritual desert= urban squalor
  • Sept. writes Quinn that he is thinking about a long poem
 1919
28 essays and reviews, almost all on literary topics: American Lit, Kipling, Henry Adams, French Novel, Engl Lit, Yeats, Rostand, Marlowe, Swinburne, Poound, Ben Jonson, Donne
  • "The Romantic Generation, If It Existed" Atheneaum
  • "Tradition and the IndividualTalent" Egoist
  • "Hamlet and His Problems" Atheneaum
  • 1920
    • Poems published by Knopf in US
    • At Bank, put in charge of settling war debts
    • Goes to France with Wyndham Lewis; meets Joyce
    • Mid-Decemeber: goes back to Paris alone and stays in Pension Casaubon, where he met Jean Verdeal 1910-11.
    		 1920
    16 essays and reviews, all literary: Swinburne, ..Blake, Euripedes, Dante, poetic Drama, Massinger, Matthew Arnold
    • "Dante as a Spiritual Leader" Athenaeum
    • Philip Massinger TLS
    • "The Perfect Critic" Atheneaum
    • "The Second-Order Mind" Dial
    • The Sacred Wood
    1921
    • Feb-April-- Viven collapses very ill until May
    • May- Viven sent away to recuperate; Rainey dates typescript of I and II to this period
    • Summer -- Mother, sister, and brother come for extended visit June 10. Leave Aug 20.  Parts I and  II of WL Typed on old machine.  Part II typed on new machine but before TSE goes to margate
    • Sept. -- Eliot given 3 months leave from the bank. b/c of psychological problems (described in a letter to Aldington as "aboulie"  "abnormal lack of ability to act or to make decisions"  MW Collegiate)
    • October 12 -- goes to Margate for a month (Probably hand wrote part IV)
    • Nov. 18 -- leaves wife in Paris with the Pounds and goes to Lausanne, leaving Pound with MS.  Gordon says this was where he cut "Death of St. Narcissus, wrote  the beginning of "The Burial of the Dead,' and revised  "What the Thunder says".  She says all these changes moved away from autobiography and toward more general cultural associations, except that the visionary Christian elements in the poem were also diguised.  Updated info on typewriters and papers suggest that only part V was written in Lusanne.
    		 1921
    8 essays and reviews in TLS and the Dial
    • "Andrew Marvell" TLS
    • "John Dryden" TLS
    • "The Metaphysical Poets" TLS  (finished  Sept  16.
    1922
    • Jan-- TSE stops in Paris and makes final changes in WL MS with Pound. (3rd typewriter wiht purple ribbon belonged to Pound) 
    • Takes on editorship of The Criterion
    • Oct. --The Waste Land  is published in the Criterion and the Dial
    		 1922
    • Marie Lloyd" the Dial
    • "The Lesson of Baudelaire"
    1923
    • "The Function of Criticism" in the Criterion
    • "Ulysses, Order, and Myth" in the Dial

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