Eliot and His Age

Though much has been written about T. S. Eliot since it was first published, Eliot and His Age remains the best introduction to the poet's life, ideas, and literary works. It is the essential starting place for anyone who would understand what Eliot was about. Russell Kirk's view of his older friend is sympathetic but not adulatory. His insights into Eliot's writings are informed by wide reading in the same authors who most influenced the poet, as well as by similar experiences and convictions.

Kirk elaborates here a significant theory of literary meaning in general, showing how great literary works awaken our intuitive reason, giving us profound visions of truth that transcend logical processes. And he traces Eliot's political and cultural ideas to their true sources, showing the balance and subtlety of Eliot's views. Eliot and His Age is a literary biography that will endure when much of the more recent writing on Eliot is gathering dust.

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What They're Saying...

"Russell Kirk is widely known and respected as a persuasive exponent of 'temperate conservatism.' A friend in T. S. Eliot's later years, he remains the closed of all Eliot's many commentators to the editor of the Criterion and the enquirer into the possibility of a Christian society and culture--that is, to the moralist who must be seen as the same man as the poet, critic, and playwright."
— William Blissett, University of Toronto