Becoming T. S. Eliot

How did an ordinary, if intelligent, boy who wrote unremarkable poems become—with no help, and in record time—the author of one of the most significant and beloved poems of the twentieth century?

T. S. Eliot's juvenilia were written by an adolescent who showed little inclination to question the social, cultural, religious, or domestic values he had inherited. By contrast, the poems of his early maturity were written by a roiling, divided self—enraged and poised, sarcastic and self-conscious, urbane and anguished. How did a young man who wrote uninspired doggerel about wilting flowers transform himself—in a mere twenty months—into the author of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"?

In Becoming T. S. Eliot, Jayme Stayer explains this staggering accomplishment by tracing Eliot's artistic and intellectual development. Relying on archival research and original analysis, this is the first book dedicated entirely to Inventions of the March Hare, Eliot's youthful notebook, which was once thought lost but rediscovered after Eliot's death. Stayer places Eliot's verses in the chronological order of their composition, teasing out the narratives of their making. Using the tools of rhetoric, he shows how the earliest poems begin as garbled performances: the unsteady apprentice at first curses and coerces his audience into the shape he desired, wincing from fear at its hostile judgments. But triumphs soon appear as Eliot gains control of his materials, shifting with trademark ease between tonal registers, masterfully constructing a sympathetic audience, and broaching daring themes.

Focusing on the period from 1909 to 1915, this incisive portrait of Eliot as a budding writer is as much a study of Eliot himself as it is a study of how a writer hones his voice. By the end of the notebook, Stayer demonstrates, the poems' speakers are whispering—conspiratorially, hesitantly, in muted pain—into the listener's ear. With the workshop poems behind him as practice pieces, Eliot steps out onto the public stage with his best work, bearing the motifs and techniques that will define his maturity and giving birth to "T. S. Eliot," the poet and the man.