After nearly a year of negotiating, between the publisher, Horace Liveright, just turned 38, in New York; the author, T. S. Eliot, 34, in London; and the author’s representative, lawyer John Quinn, 52, in New York, Eliot’s epic poem, The Waste Land, is finally published in book form.
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
Eliot has added extensive academic-style annotations to increase the number of pages to a more traditional book size.
According to the agreement worked out by Quinn, the complete poem appeared in the American literary magazine The Dial in November, and Eliot was awarded the magazine’s annual prize of $2,000. The Dial agreed to buy 350 copies of the hardback book from Boni and Liveright, and the book’s cover and advertising tout the Dial prize.
On the suggestion of The Dial editor, Gilbert Seldes, 29, Liveright has numbered the 1,000 copies of the first edition to give them more value and lowered the retail price from $2 to $1.50.
*****
In London, the author is pleased by the praise he is receiving in print and in letters from friends, for his poem as well as his own literary magazine which he has started, The Criterion.
The Criterion, October
After receiving the first issue, Quinn wrote to him,
It’s a beautiful thing, beautiful printing and on good paper. That first number will be memorable. I hope you can keep it up.”
In the midst of all this success, Eliot is still rankled by an anonymous letter he has received. Signed “Your Wellwisher,” it contained four three-halfpenny postage stamps.
Eliot knows that this is an insulting reference to his financial situation, and the effort by some of his friends to set up a trust, Bel Esprit, to give him extra income so he can leave his day job at Lloyds Bank.
Early next year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and about The Literary 1920s in Paris and New York City at the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Poet, publisher and bank clerk Thomas Stearns Eliot, 34, is proud of this first issue of the magazine he has started, TheCriterion. His wife, Vivien, also 34, suggested the title. She just likes the sound of it.
Table of Contents, TheCriterion, Vol. I, No. 1
The production value is good—small format, quality paper, clean typefaces. The content rises to the standard Eliot set for himself: Longer pieces by top writers from different countries, paid at the rate of £10 for 5,000 words. And no illustrations. He didn’t want to junk each issue up the way The Dial magazine in the States does, with reproductions of Chagalls and Brancusis spread throughout.
I will show you fear in a handful of dust…”
Eliot’s one disappointment is that he didn’t get any work from French writer Marcel Proust, 51, for this first issue, despite interventions by their mutual friend, English novelist Sydney Schiff, 54. However, he is hopeful Proust will submit something in time for Issue No. 2.
Schiff is the first one to congratulate Eliot, who receives his letter while he is looking over the first six copies that have been delivered to him at home.
Marcel Proust
Praising Eliot’s accomplishment in producing TheCriterion, Schiff also congratulates him on the crown jewel of this issue, Eliot’s own epic poem, “The Waste Land,” which he has been working on concurrently for the past year or more.
In producing the magazine, Eliot has had the support of Lady Rothermere, 48, who has financed the whole operation with her access to the fortune of her husband, owner of The Daily Mirror and The Daily Mail. She has even offered Tom an annual £600 stipend and salary for the next three years, but Eliot is concerned that his bosses at Lloyds Bank won’t like the idea of him being on someone else’s payroll too.
Promotion for The Criterion
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many…”
In writing the poem, Eliot has had the support of many of his literary friends, but none more so than fellow American ex-pat, Ezra Pound, about to turn 37. They met up in Paris early this year and again in Verona at the beginning of summer to “put it through the sieve” as Eliot describes their editing process. The cuts Ezra made were invaluable and Eliot enjoyed collaborating; both agree that the final result is Eliot’s best work. Which is why the poem is dedicated to Ezra.
Those are pearls that were his eyes…”
Now that “The Waste Land” and TheCriterion have both been loosed upon the United Kingdom, the next step is for the poem to be published in the United States, in the November issue of The Dial, on the newsstands in a few days.
After this last year of writing, editing, publishing, negotiating, and taking care of his sick wife—while holding down a full-time job—Eliot is eagerly awaiting the world’s reactions to his efforts.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night…”
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Pound, in his continuing efforts to get Eliot enough income so that he can afford to leave his bank job, has also been invaluable in getting TheDial publisher, Scofield Thayer, 32, to agree to publish “The Waste Land” at all.
At first Thayer offered Eliot $150, based on the magazine’s usual payment for poetry, with a little extra thrown in. Eliot wasn’t happy with this and prevailed upon another American who had helped with these things before—New York lawyer and patron of the arts, John Quinn, 52, who had negotiated the deal for the American publication of Eliot’s collection, Poems, a few years before.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept…”
This time Quinn got Thayer of The Dial to agree with Horace Liveright, 37, of Boni and Liveright that “The Waste Land,” in America, would appear in the November issue of The Dial and then be published the following month in book form by Boni and Liveright, with an extended series of notes which Eliot has added.
Thayer doesn’t like the poem. Or Eliot, for that matter. But his managing editor, Gilbert Seldes, 29, is impressed with “The Waste Land” and, against Thayer’s wishes, has made it the main item in the November issue. Seldes is short on copy for the fall issues, so 450 lines of new Eliot is a godsend.
The Dial, November
To make sure “The Waste Land” publication has maximum impact, Seldes has enlisted the services of one of the top publicists in the city Bea Kaufman, 27, wife of playwright George S Kaufman, 32. Seldes enticed her with an invitation for a free meal:
I want to talk about publicity for T. S. Eliot with you very shortly, and I think that these lofty business matters are always settled at lunch, paid for by the office. Let us go to Child’s some morning or afternoon.”
Bea Kaufman’s passport photo
In addition to arranging for reviews to appear in the New York Tribune and the New Republic, and writing one himself for The Nation, Seldes also sent an early copy of “The Waste Land” to Vanity Fair managing editor Edmund Wilson, 27, asking him to write a review for the December issue of The Dial. Wilson read the poem over and over, sitting on the top deck of a Fifth Avenue bus. He feels Eliot’s words speak to him as a frustrated writer, living in a crappy apartment that smells like damp cats.
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire…”
No other American magazine or book publisher has been actively involved in bidding for “The Waste Land,” but a strong last-minute effort from Quinn was what got Thayer and Liveright to agree to the schedule. Eliot is receiving only $150 from The Dial, but they have also agreed to award him their $2,000 Dial prize this year. (Shhhh—that won’t be announced until the December issue.)
As a reward for his pro bono work. Eliot is sending Quinn the original manuscript of “The Waste Land” to add to his collection of authors’ manuscripts.
On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing…”
Thayer still isn’t happy about the poem itself, or its first place position in his magazine. He’d still rather be publishing something from an established novelist like Edith Wharton, 60.
All there is to do now is wait to see what the reviewers and the reading public think.
Early next year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and about The Literary 1920s in Paris and New York City at the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Novelist Virginia Woolf, 40, is sitting in a comfy chair in the Woolfs’ house in the country with a blue-bound book in her lap.
Virginia is s l o w l y cutting each page of the brand-new copy of Ulysses which she ordered from her London bookseller. £4. Not cheap.
James Joyce’s Ulysses
She knows she has to actually read the book, not just handle it. She did read the first eight chapters earlier this year, in magazine excerpts. And then re-read the first four.
Then put it down and told herself she would definitely finish it. Soon.
Her husband Leonard, 41, jumped right in and started reading. Ironically, the manuscript of Ulysses was submitted to them a few years ago, to be published by their own Hogarth Press. They declined. Too big a print job, they explained.
Virginia and Leonard Woolf
Virginia has written to her brother-in-law, art critic Clive Bell, also 40:
Mr. Joyce…I have him on the table…Leonard is already 30 pages deep…I look, and sip, and shudder.”
After all, she’s been ill. Bad case of the flu. And, despite that, she has been working on a long short story—“Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street”—that she might send to their friend, American ex-pat Tom Eliot, 33, for his new magazine. If she has it done in a few weeks.
Eliot. He’s one of the ones who has been praising Joyce and his latest book. Sometimes Virginia thinks Eliot likes everyone else’s writing better than hers.
She’ll start reading it again if the rain keeps up.
In June I will be talking about the Stein family salons in Paris before and after The Great War at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Virginia Woolf, 40, is watching her husband, Leonard, 41, walk their guest for today’s tea, fellow novelist Edward Morgan Forster, 43, to the bus stop. Forster is heading out to visit his favorite aunt in Putney, just a few miles away.
Hogarth House
Virginia is so pleased that Morgan has come back to England—just last week—after almost a year away in India. But he seems depressed. He’s back living with his Mum and cat in Weybridge, in an ugly old house far from a train station, and hasn’t published a novel in a dozen years.
They discussed their recent mutual discovery of the work of Marcel Proust, 50. Forster started reading him on the boat back home; Virginia has been reading the Frenchman while working on a short story, “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street.” Both admire the way he uses memory to define characters.
Two days ago the Woolfs hosted another writer-friend for tea, American ex-pat T. S. Eliot, 34. He too seems a bit distracted by his current situation, working all day in a bank and coming home to a wife who is ill. Virginia has always been intimidated by him. Forster she thinks of as a friend, someone whose opinions she values. Eliot she sees as a competitor.
E. M. Forster and T. S. Eliot
Tom told them about a long poem, about 40 pages and as yet untitled, that he’s working on. He says it is his best work and the Woolfs’ Hogarth Press has agreed to publication in the fall. He has also received funding to start a quarterly literary magazine, also untitled.
There was something about Eliot that Virginia thought she had noticed before. He wears a thin dusting of face powder. Sort of a purplish color. The gossip is that he wants to make himself look even more stressed than he is.
After two months of sickness herself, being bed-ridden and unable to write, Virginia is now feeling her energy returning. The doctor has allowed her to get out and walk—which is how she writes, working out the text in her head. And she can now receive guests such as Morgan and Tom.
She still doesn’t understand Eliot’s enthusiasm for the new novel by Irishman James Joyce, 40, Ulysses. Virginia and Leonard rejected it for their press a few years ago. Now a little bookstore in Paris has published it. The way Eliot talks about the novel, Virginia feels that Joyce has done what she is trying to do—maybe even better?
Virginia decides she needs to go back and read Ulysses again.
This June I will be talking about the Stein family salons in Paris before and after the Great War at the Osher Lifelong Learning program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon in both print and e-book versions.
Scofield Thayer, 31, editor of the American literary magazine, The Dial, has come here specifically to be psychoanalyzed by the legendary Professor Sigmund Freud, 65, for a fee of $100 per week.
Sigmund Freud’s house in Vienna
On the way from New York to Vienna, Thayer stopped off for a bit in Paris, meeting up with one of his magazine’s main contributors, American poet Ezra Pound, about to turn 36, who was kind enough to introduce him around to other ex-pats such as writer Gertrude Stein, 47. and her partner Alice B. Toklas, 44.
With him in Paris was yet another American poet, E. E. Cummings, just turned 27. Thayer has been helping to raise the daughter Cummings fathered two years ago with Thayer’s wife, Elaine Orr Thayer, 25. Scofield and Elaine have just recently finalized their divorce.
Elaine Thayer and her daughter
While Scofield is living in Vienna, which he plans will be for the next two years, he is still running TheDial. He supervises the contents, approves layouts, and tries to drum up some investment from wealthy Europeans he knows.
Thayer has decided to abandon his European expansion plans for his magazine. Another of his ex-pat poet contributors, Tom Eliot, 33, and he have been in talks with Lady Margaret Rothermere, 47, wife of the publisher of the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper, about funding a UK version of TheDial.
But it has become clear that Lady Rothermere is more interested in supporting a new magazine that Eliot has proposed—TheCriterion—rather than the expansion of an existing one from the States.
Withdrawing from the field, today Thayer writes to Eliot’s wife Vivien, 33, who is now handling all of Tom’s correspondence, that “the multiplication of magazines” in the market would not be a good thing:
The more artistic journals you publish the more money is wasted on printers, and paper dealers and the less is left for the artists themselves.”
Scofield Thayer
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. Volumes I and II covering 1920 and 1921 are available in print and e-book formats on Amazon. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
Next week I will be speaking about Writers’ Salons in Dublin and London Before the Great War in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and e-book versions.
SuchFriends Blog 