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A poem in five parts set in the post-World War I Western world; published in England in October 1922 in the Criterion, in America in November 1922 in the Dial, and in book form in December 1922.
by T. S. Eliot
Synopsis
Through a series of vignettes. The Waste Land depicts the social and personal decay and despair of post-World War I Western culture.
The Poem in Focus
Events in History at the Time of the Poem
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, and died in 1965 in England. Between these two dates, he transformed himself from an American philosophy student to a powerful British man of letters, and in the process also transformed modern English poetry. The Waste Land was first published in 1922 in the shadow of World War I and the chaotic, depressed culture of rebuilding and reflection that followed it. The poem became one of the key works of "modernism," an important artistic trend of the early-to-mid 1900s that sought to break with traditional forms and in post-World War I works often reflected a sense of disillusion with the modern world.
For More Information
Ackroyd, Peter. T. S. Eliot: A Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984.
Cuddy, Lois Q., and David H. Hirsch, eds. Critical Essays on T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1991.
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land and Other Poems. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962.
Eliot, T. S. On Poetry and Poets. London: Faber, 1957.
Moody, A. David, ed. The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Reeves, Gareth. T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994.
Sigg, Eric. The American T. S. Eliot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Literature and Its Times © 1997 Joyce Moss and George Wilson © 2007 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
