10 - Literary journalism

Summary

A significant but sometimes overlooked part of T. S. Eliot's sizable contribution to the literary and intellectual life of his time was made through journalism. Periodicals of different kinds were an important focus of his activities for almost sixty years, during which period he authored a prodigious and varied array of articles, book reviews, editorial commentaries, correspondence and other occasional writings. Donald Gallup's list of Eliot's published works in his T. S. Eliot: A Bibliography (1969) identifies more than 740 contributions to over 160 different periodicals and newspapers, a tally that has grown steadily over the years as additional items have been brought to light. Only a very small proportion of this material was reprinted in the volumes of literary and social criticism published by Eliot during his lifetime.

The earliest products of Eliot's involvement with the periodical press are to be found among his juvenilia. In 1905, when he was a 16-year-old day boy at Smith Academy in St Louis, his short stories and poems were printed in the school magazine the Smith Academy Record. During his undergraduate years at Harvard University he contributed verse to the Harvard Advocate, and in January 1909, in his third year, joined its editorial board. His contributions to the Advocate during his tenure as one of its editors include a handful of pieces in prose that show him exploiting some of the journalistic forms – editorial commentary, article, book review – to which he would return hundreds of times over the ensuing decades.