David E. Chinitz

T.S. Eliot, who has been called the most influential poet of the twentieth century, was also one of his era’s most important literary and cultural critics. A prolific essayist, Eliot was a significant contributor to public discussion not only of literature but of contemporary culture, education, religion, politics, sociology, and anthopology. Much of his work, however, remains uncollected almost a half century after his death. In the years covered by this project (1940-46), Eliot produced about 130 works of prose, including major and minor literary essays as well as topical pieces written in response to the Second World War and to various controversies of the day. The project, part of an eight-volume Complete Prose commissioned by Johns Hopkins University Press, requires the production of an accurate text and rich annotation to make Eliot’s essays accessible to an interntational readership and to scholars in any discipline.