This volume collects readings of the poems of T. S. Eliot published by the early 1920’s and includes well-known selections from his Prufrock and Other Observations (1915) and The Waste Land (1922) in entirety. Most of the poems in Prufrock and Other Observations had been published in literary magazines. Among these are such well-known favorites as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, “Portrait of a Lady” and “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”, many of which are in a “stream of consciousness style” characteristic of modernism.

The Waste Land, first published in The Criterion, is Eliot’s best known work and marked a significant turning point for poetry, both in substance and in style.  Ezra Pound had an influential role in shaping and editing the work from a longer manuscript. It is noted for its many obscure references and quotations, for its structural complexity, with frequent shifts in narrator, time and location, and a mixture of prophecy and satire. 

These are the poems that established Eliot’s position as a major and influential modern poet. In Eliot’s own words, "My reputation in London is built upon one small volume of verse, and is kept up by printing two or three more poems in a year. The only thing that matters is that these should be perfect in their kind, so that each should be an event."  Perfect, indeed.

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