T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf: 1930-1933

The purpose of this paper is to explore, from the perspective of biographical criticism, the relationship between T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf during the years 1930-1933. Their consolidated literary friendship is further intensified through criticizing and sharing the obscurity which requires several re-readings of Eliot’s translated French epic Anabasis (1930), his religious poem Ash Wednesday (1930), and Woolf’s experimental novel The Waves (1931). In her 1930 diary, Woolf’s positive/negative comparison of W. B. Yeats the Irish master poet in his prime and Eliot the English genius poet in his worst time, whom she encountered at Lady Ottoline Morrell’s Garsington Manor, must be an invaluable document in modernist English poetry. Moreover, in her letters and diaries around 1932 and 1933, Woolf illustrates her intimate bond with Eliot by poignantly elaborating on the tragic separation of the poor Eliot and the insane Ophelia-like Vivien. Meanwhile, in his letters to Woolf in 1933, Eliot also trusts her as a confidante by sharing his experiences in detail including Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard and lectures on Edward Lear, James Joyce, Woolf at Princeton, Yale, Smith, etc in America. Despite their rather ambivalent views of each other, Woolf’s intention to read Eliot’s complimentary gift, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), which is the offshoot of Eliot’s Harvard lectures evidently underscores their amicable literary friendship.