End of a dry season

The Letters of T.S.Eliot is a project which already seems to belong to another world, of leisure and detailed scholarship. It was conceived of decades ago, and the first volume, under the editorship of Eliot’s widow Valerie, came out in 1988. A second volume, with the support of the excellent John Haffenden, emerged 21 years later; this third takes us only up to 1927, with a good 40 years of a busy professional life to follow. There may be a dozen volumes to go, and the undertaking in the end will rival the great Pilgrim edition of Dickens’s letters in scale.

The editing of the Eliot letters is exemplary in its detail, authority and quality of annotation. It is the closest thing to a perfect edition of a great writer’s correspondence that can be imagined. There are few collected literary correspondences of this quality now emerging in English. CUP’s Beckett letters labour under such impossible conditions imposed by the author that sooner or later they will have to be done again. Eliot’s letters, it is interesting to note, are not edited by practising academics.

John Haffenden is now retired from his professorship, with no need to show a record of publication, and for Valerie Eliot it is clearly a labour of duty.

Although there are some major projects emerging from the academy, such as Darwin’s correspondence, institutional pressures on academics to publish regularly are going to work against such longterm projects. (‘How’s it going?’ ‘Oh, well, I’m hoping to bring out the second volume in 20 years’ time.’) In future, the correspondence and private papers of major writers will be placed in the hands of relicts and the eminent retired. This sometimes yields excellent results — as with Eliot — but sometimes disastrous ones, as in the case of Penelope Fitzgerald.