Topland Group is a British property and investment company. In 2014, Topland was described as one of the world's largest privately owned property and investment groups.
82-591: The company head office is at 105 Wigmore Street, London. Topland Group is one of the world's largest privately owned property and investment groups. The company owns property in the UK and in 2013 bought 12 out of the 15 hotels (all in the UK) owned by the bankrupt Menzies Hotels for about $ 135 million. They own a number of other UK hotels, including Bath's Royal Crescent Hotel, the Hilton Brighton Metropole ,
164-628: A hotel or resort in the United Kingdom is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . The Waste Land The Waste Land is a poem by T. S. Eliot , widely regarded as one of the most important English-language poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry . Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of Eliot's magazine The Criterion and in
246-478: A description of spring as something to be dreaded, with the comforting static nature of winter giving way to the forcible activity of spring. Eliot moves to the more specific location of Central Europe around the period of the First World War , and adopts a prophetic tone describing a sterile desert. Quotations from the operatic love story Tristan und Isolde bookend a memory of the "hyacinth girl", with
328-764: A freelance basis for The Athenaeum and The Times Literary Supplement in 1919, which built his reputation as a respected critic and journalist. While living in London Eliot became acquainted with literary figures, most notably Pound in 1914, who would help publish Eliot's work and edit The Waste Land . Eliot also met Aldous Huxley and Katherine Mansfield , as well as members of the Bloomsbury Group , in London in 1916, although he did not meet Leonard and Virginia Woolf until two years later. Eliot's first collection, Prufrock and Other Observations ,
410-443: A lament for Western civilization". The Waste Land was also informed by developments in the visual arts. Its style and content reflect the methods of Cubism and Futurism to take apart and reassemble their subjects in different forms, and the interest of Surrealism in the unconscious mind and its influence on culture—similar themes to what interested Eliot about The Golden Bough . Scholar Jacob Korg identifies similarities with
492-483: A major renovation in 2022, where a 26-million pound refurbishment took place across all of the 321 guest rooms, as well as at the 1890 "At The Met" restaurant, the hotel’s bar and terrace. The public areas, reception and lobby were also renovated up until 10 May 2023, when the hotel officially rebranded from "Hilton Brighton Metropole" to " DoubleTree by Hilton Metropole " and operating under one of Hilton Worldwide's brands, DoubleTree by Hilton . This article about
574-526: A matter-of-fact manner, and appear to be trapped in loveless superficial relationships. The end of the section sees Eliot interleave the words of the barman calling last orders ("Hurry up please its [ sic ] time") and the last words of Ophelia in Hamlet before her suicide by drowning, signifying the inevitability of ageing and death. A reference to Edmund Spenser 's poem Prothalamion , which describes an elegant aristocratic summer wedding by
656-524: A meaningless routine. This section centres around women and seduction, with the title a reference to the Jacobean play Women Beware Women in which the character Bianca is seduced while her mother-in-law is distracted by a game of chess. Its first scene describes an elaborately decorated room recalling Classical lovers such as Mark Antony and Cleopatra or Dido and Aeneas . The narrative moves to more disturbing references, such as to Philomela who
738-408: A metre). Lines are often fragmented, and verses are generally of unequal length, although there are instances of regularity—for example, the first two verses of "The Fire Sermon" are formed like Petrarchan sonnets . During the editing process, Pound would highlight lines that were "too penty" (i.e. too close to iambic pentameter ), prompting them to be changed to less regular rhythms. Eliot disliked
820-596: A mixed response, with some critics finding it wilfully obscure while others praised its originality. Subsequent years saw the poem become established as a central work in the modernist canon, and it proved to become one of the most influential works of the century. While at Harvard College Eliot met Emily Hale , the daughter of a minister at Harvard Divinity School , through family friends. He declared his love for her before leaving to live in Europe in 1914, but he did not believe his feelings to be reciprocated. Her influence
902-460: A negative influence on American literature, writing that it had "set [him] back twenty years". Gilbert Seldes , who first published the poem in the US, and Pound, its editor, both defended it, as did Conrad Aiken , who described it in a 1923 review as "one of the most moving and original poems of our time", although he found the form incoherent. Seldes commissioned a review from Edmund Wilson , which
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#1732798504596984-511: A new and significant poetic technique". Similarly, the structure of the poem, or lack thereof, continued to generate debate, as did interpretations of the themes themselves. I. A. Richards praised Eliot on these points in his 1926 book Principles of Literary Criticism , describing his imagery technique as "a 'music of ideas ' ", and in the 1930s Richards' commentary was taken further by F. R. Leavis , F. O. Matthiessen and Cleanth Brooks , who believed that, despite its apparent disjointedness,
1066-468: A preference for Jules Laforgue (who was himself a Whitman translator and admirer). Nevertheless, scholars have noted strong similarities in the two poets' use of free verse. The first lines of The Waste Land , which are an inversion of Chaucer's opening to The Canterbury Tales , strongly resemble Whitman's imagery at the beginning of " When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd ": As well as
1148-401: A similar success." In the autumn of 1921 Eliot and Vivienne travelled to the coastal resort of Margate . Eliot had been recommended rest following a diagnosis of some form of nervous disorder , and had been granted three months' leave from the bank where he was employed, so the trip was intended as a period of convalescence. Eliot worked on what would become The Waste Land while sitting in
1230-429: A small section of Joseph Conrad 's Heart of Darkness describing the death of the character Kurtz . Pound suggested it be changed as he felt Conrad was not "weighty" enough, although it is unclear if he was referring to the author or the quotation itself. Following the epigraph is a dedication (added in a 1925 republication) that reads "For Ezra Pound: il miglior fabbro " ("the better craftsman"). This dedication
1312-709: A vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures. It employs many allusions to the Western canon : Ovid 's Metamorphoses , the legend of the Fisher King , Dante 's Divine Comedy , Chaucer 's Canterbury Tales , and even a contemporary popular song, "That Shakespearian Rag". The poem is divided into five sections. The first, "The Burial of the Dead", introduces the diverse themes of disillusionment and despair. The second, "A Game of Chess", employs alternating narrations in which vignettes of several characters display
1394-482: A warning to pursue a meaningful life. The poem returns to the arid desert scene visited in Part I. Rain has not arrived, despite the promise from thunder and the approaching spring. A description of a journey across the desert is interspersed with references to the death and resurrection of Jesus, implying that the journey has a spiritual element. The journey ends at a chapel, but it is ruined. Rain finally arrives with
1476-461: A whisper at some image, at some vision, – he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath– "'The horror! the horror!'" Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness Eliot's original choice of epigraph. The poem is preceded by a Latin and Ancient Greek epigraph (without translation) from chapter 48 of the Satyricon of Petronius : Eliot originally intended the epigraph to be
1558-584: A £160m forward funding with Blackstone-owned iQ Student Accommodation for a student housing and co-living campus next to the University of Warwick. Topland annually hosts a charity business lunch in conjunction with Jewish Care , currently in its 15th year. The most recent one was held at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London, at which 1000 people attended and £440,000 was raised for the charity's causes. Topland has hosted and continues to host
1640-549: Is based on Marie Larisch , and the "hyacinth girl" represents Emily Hale , with whom Eliot had fallen in love several years previously. "A Game of Chess" features a representation of Vivienne; and its conversations are taken from those overheard by the couple while in a local pub. Scholars have identified more contemporary artistic influences on Eliot, contrary to the poet's own focus on older and foreign-language influences. Eliot had read early drafts of parts of Ulysses and corresponded with Joyce about them, and its influence
1722-524: Is felt in The Waste Land , and he would renew his correspondence with her in 1927. Eliot married his first wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood in 1915, having been introduced to her earlier that year by Scofield Thayer . She had a history of mental illness, and it is not clear to what extent Eliot knew about this before the wedding. The marriage had a shaky start: Eliot appears to have had certain neuroses concerning sex and sexuality, perhaps indicated by
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#17327985045961804-459: Is only at this point that the reason for the section title is clear, " The Fire Sermon " being a teaching delivered by the Buddha. This is the shortest section of the poem, describing the aftermath of the drowning of Phoenician sailor Phlebas, an event forewarned by Madame Sosostris. His corpse is still trapped in a whirlpool that serves as a metaphor for the cycle of life and death, and serves as
1886-473: Is seen in the symbolist use of cross-references and stylistic variety in The Waste Land , as well as the mythic parallels between the characters of Ulysses and those of the Odyssey , writing that this "mythical method" had "the importance of a scientific discovery". Eliot would later express the opinion that, compared to The Waste Land , Ulysses was a superior example of such literary developments, and
1968-691: Is taken from Charles Dickens ' novel Our Mutual Friend , in which the widow Betty Higden says of her adopted foundling son Sloppy: "You mightn't think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices." In the end, the title Eliot chose was The Waste Land . In his first note to the poem he attributes the title to Jessie Weston 's book on the Grail legend, From Ritual to Romance (1920). Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in
2050-469: The River Thames , contrasts with the decaying and polluted modern state of the setting. Similarly the beautiful nymphs of the past have been replaced by prostitutes, and the washing of their feet in soda water is ironically contrasted with the washing of feet performed by choir boys in some tellings of the Fisher King legend. This is followed by a brief description of a dirty London and Mr Eugenides,
2132-582: The Stakis brand), and previously owned by The Royal Bank of Scotland , its freehold is now owned by the Topland Group . Flats add-on 1960s-1970s In the 1960s or 1970s a two-storey flat block was built on top of the hotel for residential use. The flats are typical 1960s tower block style building and when the apartments were built onto the hotel It is referenced in section 3, "The Fire Sermon" of T. S. Eliot 's The Waste Land . The hotel underwent
2214-541: The "birth" of the poem, Pound wrote a bawdy poem of 48 lines entitled " Sage Homme " in which he identified Eliot as the mother of the poem but compared himself to the midwife. The first lines are: These are the poems of Eliot By the Uranian Muse begot; A Man their Mother was, A Muse their Sire. How did the printed Infancies result From Nuptials thus doubly difficult? If you must needs enquire Know diligent Reader That on each Occasion Ezra performed
2296-653: The Caesarean Operation. Negotiations over the publication of The Waste Land started in January 1922 and lasted until the late summer. Horace Liveright , of the New York publishing firm of Boni & Liveright , had a number of meetings with Pound while in Paris, and at a dinner on 3 January 1922, with Pound, Eliot and James Joyce , he made offers for The Waste Land , Ulysses , and works by Pound. Eliot
2378-568: The Christian Bible and Book of Common Prayer , the Hindu Brihadaranyaka Upanishad , and the Buddha's Fire Sermon ; and of cultural and anthropological studies such as James Frazer 's The Golden Bough and Jessie Weston's From Ritual to Romance . As well as drawing from myth and fiction, Eliot included people he knew as figures in the poem. "The Burial of the Dead" contains the character Marie, who
2460-547: The Eliots' marriage, although at her request a specific line was removed – "The ivory men make company between us" – perhaps because she found the depiction of their unhappy marriage too painful. In 1960, thirteen years after Vivienne's death, Eliot inserted the line from memory into a fair copy made for sale to aid the London Library . In a late December 1921 letter to Eliot to celebrate
2542-553: The Glasgow Hilton and several Thistle Hotels , six in central London and one in Edinburgh. Between 2000 and 2020, Topland amalgamated and sold a number of large retail and supermarket portfolios through sale & leaseback transactions; these include a £500m Marks & Spencer portfolio, a £950m Tesco Supermarket portfolio, and a £300m deal with Spanish retailer Eroski. According to The Sunday Times Rich List in 2023
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2624-538: The Nayland Rock shelter on Margate Sands, producing "some 50 lines", and the area is referenced directly in "The Fire Sermon" ("On Margate Sands / I can connect / Nothing with nothing.") The couple travelled to Paris in November, where Eliot showed an early version of the poem to Pound. Pound had become acquainted with Eliot seven years previously, and had helped get some of Eliot's previous work published. Eliot
2706-698: The Royal Crescent Hotel, in the Royal Crescent in Bath , the Hilton Brighton Metropole , the Glasgow Hilton and several Thistle Hotels , six in central London, and one in Edinburgh. In January 2022, Topland purchased several sites and assembled a development pipeline of £850m. In July 2022 Topland began the development of a £165m sustainable office scheme in the City of London, which they subsequently pre-let to Tik Tok . In 2023, Topland agreed to
2788-469: The South of England, it was built in 1890 and has 340 bedrooms. The hotel has five lifts which three serve the tower block floors. The two original lifts were originally manually controlled and the other three were added in the 1970s including the goods lift. All five were installed by Otis Elevator Company . Since 2000, the hotel has been operated by Hilton Hotels & Resorts (previously it operated under
2870-520: The United States in the November issue of The Dial . Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", and "These fragments I have shored against my ruins". The Waste Land does not follow a single narrative or feature a consistent style or structure. The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy, and features abrupt and unannounced changes of narrator, location, and time, conjuring
2952-408: The collage techniques of Braque and Picasso , wherein the artists' increasingly non-representational works would include a small piece of "realistic" detail. In the same sense, The Waste Land directly includes "reality", such as the pub conversation and the phrase "London Bridge is falling down", alongside its "imagined" content, to achieve a similar effect. Interpretations of The Waste Land in
3034-495: The comic and the macabre coexist with the solemn words of religious instruction, one language is supplanted by another, until in the final lines of the poem the fragments are collected together." The Waste Land is notable for its seemingly disjointed structure, employing a wide variety of voices which are presented sometimes in monologue, dialogue, or with more than two characters speaking. The poem jumps from one voice or image to another without clearly delineating these shifts for
3116-436: The cost to The Dial by $ 315). Eliot suggested that the "possibility of the book's getting the prize" might allow Boni & Liveright to use the publicity increase their initial sales. The poem was first published in the UK in the first issue (16 October 1922) of Eliot's magazine The Criterion and in the US in the November issue of The Dial (actually published around 20 October). Eliot had initially suggested spreading
3198-555: The early 1950s Mrs Anderson's daughter Mary Conroy found the documents in storage. In 1958 she sold them privately to the New York Public Library . It was not until April 1968, three years after Eliot's death, that the existence and whereabouts of the manuscript drafts were made known to Valerie Eliot , his second wife. In 1971 a facsimile of the original drafts was published, containing Pound's annotations, edited and annotated by Valerie Eliot. The initial reviews of
3280-571: The epigraph (Pound rejected both of these ideas). Biographer Peter Ackroyd considers Pound's focus to have been on "the underlying rhythm of the poem ... Pound heard the music, and cut away what was for him the extraneous material which was attached to it." By removing much of Eliot's material, Pound allowed for readers to more freely interpret it as a less structured and didactic work, and his edits are generally considered to have been beneficial. Vivienne also reviewed drafts of The Waste Land . The section "A Game of Chess" partly depicts scenes from
3362-421: The even more free style of The Waste Land , adhering to Pound's dictum that verse should "[depart] in no way from speech save by a heightened intensity (i.e. simplicity)". Critic Harold Bloom goes on to identify further similarities between the two poems, with Eliot's "third who always walks beside you" as Whitman's "knowledge of death", and the poems themselves as "an elegy for the poet's own genius, rather than
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3444-531: The event annually. Hilton Brighton Metropole The DoubleTree by Hilton Brighton Metropole is a 4-star hotel and conference centre located on the seafront in Brighton , East Sussex . The architect was Alfred Waterhouse , who also was architect of University College London and the Natural History Museum , London. Currently the UK's largest residential conference centre in
3526-406: The first few decades after its publication had been closely linked to Romance , due to Eliot's prominent acknowledgement of Jessie Weston's 1920 book From Ritual to Romance in his notes. Eliot's 1956 disavowal of this line of enquiry with his comment that they invited "bogus scholarship", however, prompted reinterpretations of the poem—less as a work which incorporates previous Romantic ideals and
3608-511: The founders' net worth was approximately £3.5 billion. In 2012, The Guardian reported that Topland was being sued by the UK's Ministry of Justice , having "conspired with a property agent in 2002 to extract inflated rents from the government on one of its central London buildings which houses the main London divorce courts". The UK government has accused Topland of "deceit, fraud by bribery, dishonest assistance and breach of confidence". The case
3690-469: The fundamental emptiness of their lives. "The Fire Sermon" offers a philosophical meditation in relation to self-denial and sexual dissatisfaction; "Death by Water" is a brief description of a drowned merchant; and "What the Thunder Said" is a culmination of the poem's previously exposited themes explored through a description of a desert journey. Upon its initial publication The Waste Land received
3772-489: The gift of prophecy. Unlike the previous allusions to times past, Tiresias indicates that love has always been this dispassionate and squalid. The poem moves back to the Thames, again using allusions to the past to highlight its current state of decay and sterility, but the section ends on a possibly hopeful note with the words of St Augustine and the Buddha, both of whom lived lives of extravagance before adopting asceticism. It
3854-407: The great literary critics of past time". So, Eliot's epigraph praises Pound's critical and poetic skills by the mouth of Dante. Eliot "wished his poem to go through English poetic styles as Joyce had gone through English prose styles", styles in turn derived from ancient sources. Daniel represents an important crossroads in the map of poetry in The Waste Land from the ancient to modern, sitting at
3936-505: The juncture between antiquity and modernity. "In the forms of Arnaut Daniel's canzoni I find a corresponding excellence, seeing that they satisfy not only the modern ear, gluttonous of rhyme, but also the ear trained to Roman and Hellenic music, to which rhyme seemed and seems a vulgarity". The section title comes from the Anglican burial service in the Book of Common Prayer . It opens with
4018-450: The manuscript draft of The Waste Land in London, Eliot visited him in the country. While walking through a graveyard, they discussed Thomas Gray 's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard . Aldington writes: "I was surprised to find that Eliot admired something so popular, and then went on to say that if a contemporary poet, conscious of his limitations as Gray evidently was, would concentrate all his gifts on one such poem he might achieve
4100-434: The many " highbrow " references and quotations from poets such as Baudelaire , Dante, Ovid , and Homer , he included several references to " lowbrow " genres, such as an allusion to the 1912 popular song "That Shakespearian Rag" by Gene Buck , Herman Ruby and Dave Stamper . The poem contrasts such elements throughout: "Ornate vocabulary gives way to colloquial dialogue, lyrical moments are interrupted by sordid intrusions,
4182-402: The motif of lilacs growing in the spring, Whitman treats the inevitable return of spring as "an occasion for mourning the death that allows for rebirth", a similar perspective being put forward by Eliot and completely contrary to Chaucer, who celebrates the "sweet showers" of April bringing forth spring flowers. Scholar Pericles Lewis further argues that Whitman's speech-like rhythms anticipate
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#17327985045964264-477: The narrator trapped in a static existence between life and death, unable to profess his love. The scene then moves to the fortune-teller Madame Sosostris, who is described in ironically down-to-earth terms, and the Tarot cards she draws foretell events in the rest of the poem. The final part of "The Burial of the Dead" is a description of London as Dante's hell, with inhabitants trapped in a death-like state following
4346-466: The novel has been described as "the most important model for the poem". Unlike its use in Ulysses , however, Eliot saw the mythical method as a way to write poetry without relying on conventional narration—he uses his mythical sources for their ritualistic structures, rather than as a counterpoint to the poem's "story". Eliot was resistant to ascribing any influence to Walt Whitman , instead expressing
4428-410: The one-eyed Smyrna merchant foreseen by Madame Sosostris. The narrative then moves to a description of a loveless tryst between a typist and a "young man carbuncular", both acting mechanically, their automatic motions underscored by Eliot's use of rhyme. They are observed by the figure of Tiresias, a character taken from classical myth who lived as a woman for seven years and then was blinded and given
4510-471: The poem contains an underlying unity of form—for Leavis represented by the figure of Tiresias, and for Matthiessen and Brooks by the Grail mythology. This view became dominant for the next three decades. Eliot originally considered entitling the poem He Do the Police in Different Voices , and in the original manuscripts the first two sections of the poem appear under this title. This phrase
4592-479: The poem is followed by several pages of notes by Eliot, purporting to explain his own metaphors, references, and allusions. These were included in order to lengthen the work so that it could be published as a book, as well as to pre-empt accusations of plagiarism which his earlier work had been charged with. Pound later observed that the notes served to pique the interest of reviewers and academic critics. However they are considered to be of limited use for interpreting
4674-464: The poem over four issues of The Dial , having doubts about its coherence as a single piece, and had considered publishing it across two issues of The Criterion in order to improve sales, but Pound objected. In December the Boni & Liveright book edition was published in the US, with an initial run of 1,000 copies and, very soon afterwards, a second edition, also of 1,000 copies. The first book edition
4756-503: The poem to Thayer for publication shortly after returning from Lausanne in January. Even though The Dial offered $ 150 (approx. £30–35) for the poem, 25% more than its standard rate, Eliot was offended that a year's work would be valued so low, especially since he knew that George Moore had been paid £100 for a short story. The deal with The Dial almost fell through (other magazines considered were The Little Review and Vanity Fair ), but with Quinn's efforts eventually an agreement
4838-628: The poem were mixed. Some critics disparaged its disjointed structure, and suggested that its extensive use of quotations gave it a sense of unoriginality. F. L. Lucas wrote a particularly negative review in the New Statesman , stating that "Eliot has shown that he can at moments write real blank verse; but that is all"; The Guardian published a review calling it "waste paper", and the London Mercury considered it incomprehensible. William Carlos Williams considered it to have had
4920-427: The poem, and Eliot's own interpretations changed over the succeeding decades. Eliot later expressed some regret at including the notes at all, saying in 1956 that they had prompted "the remarkable exposition of bogus scholarship". "A Game of Chess", lines 117–130 The style of the poem is marked by the many intertextual allusions and quotations that Eliot included, and their juxtaposition . In addition to
5002-679: The reader, creating the paradoxical effect of a poem which contains deeply personal subject matter being simultaneously an impersonal collage. As Eliot explained in his 1919 essay " Tradition and the Individual Talent ", he saw the ideal poet as a conduit who creates a piece of art that reflects culture and society, as well as their own perspective and experiences, in an impersonal and craftsmanlike way. The poem plays with traditional forms of metre and rhyme, often implying blank verse without strictly committing to it (especially through quotations of works that are themselves written in such
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#17327985045965084-440: The same compliment through what Pound describes as "the device of praising Daniel by the mouth of Guinicelli". It is further explained in the 1910 The Spirit of Romance that Dante is setting "the laudation in the mouth of his greatest Italian predecessor, Guido Guinicelli of Bologna". Pound observed that "Dante's poetry so overshadows his work in prose that we are apt to forget that he is numbered with Aristotle and Longinus among
5166-408: The sea shore, having travelled across the desert. He considers taking some form of action in his final question "Shall I at least set my lands in order?" but does not resolve to do anything. The poem ends with fragmentary quotations perhaps suggesting the possibility of new life, and finally the line " Shantih shantih shantih " ("Peace peace peace"), the formal ending to an Upanishad . The text of
5248-503: The short term. Eliot and Pound proceeded to edit the poem further, continuing after Eliot returned to London. The editing process removed a large amount of content. Eliot allowed Pound a high degree of control over the shape and contents of the final version, deferring to his judgement on matters such as using Eliot's previous poem " Gerontion " as a prelude, or using an excerpt from the death of Kurtz in Conrad 's Heart of Darkness as
5330-413: The succeeding years both experienced periods of depression, with Eliot being constantly exhausted and Vivienne experiencing migraines. 1921 saw Eliot be diagnosed with a nervous disorder and prescribed three months of rest, a period that precipitated the writing of The Waste Land . Eliot had worked as a schoolteacher from 1915 to 1916, resigning to make a living from lecturing and literary reviews. He
5412-697: The term " free verse ", however, believing it impossible to write verse that is truly "free". Sources which Eliot quotes or alludes to include the works of classical figures Sophocles , Petronius , Virgil , and Ovid; 14th-century writers Dante and Geoffrey Chaucer ; Elizabethan and Jacobean writers Edmund Spenser , Thomas Kyd , William Shakespeare , Thomas Middleton , and John Webster ; 19th-century figures Gérard de Nerval , Paul Verlaine , Charles Baudelaire , Alfred Tennyson , and Richard Wagner ; and more contemporary writers Aldous Huxley , Hermann Hesse , Frank Chapman and F. H. Bradley . Additionally Eliot makes extensive use of religious writings, including
5494-454: The text that became The Waste Land for several years preceding its first publication in 1922. In 1919 he referred to "a long poem I have had on my mind for a long time" in a letter to his mother. In a May 1921 letter to New York lawyer and art patron John Quinn , Eliot wrote that he had "a long poem in mind and partly on paper which I am wishful to finish". Richard Aldington , in his memoirs, relates that "a year or so" before Eliot read him
5576-546: The thunder, and its noise is linked with text from the Hindu Brihadaranyaka Upanishad , joining Eastern religion with Western. The thunder implores the narrator to "give", but the associated imagery suggests he may already be dead; to "sympathise", but he contends that every person is trapped in their own self-centred prison; and to "control", which is explored with the metaphor of a sailor co-operating with wind and water. The narrator ends up fishing at
5658-451: The women featured in his poetry, and there is speculation that the two were not sexually compatible. In late 1915 Vivienne began to suffer from "nerves" or "acute neuralgia", an illness which undoubtedly bore a mental component. Their friend Bertrand Russell took her to the seaside town of Torquay to recuperate; Eliot took Russell's place after a week, and the couple walked the shore, which Eliot found tranquil. Once back in London, Vivienne
5740-413: Was "settled out of court on confidential terms". Although Topland has diversified into natural resources and renewable energy, it's principal activity remains commercial real estate, with a portfolio of over 220 properties, valued in the region of £3.5 billion. In 2019, Topland sold the 26 property Hallmark Hotels portfolio for £250m. Topland also has a hotel portfolio consisting of 40 hotels which includes
5822-416: Was left bored and unoccupied while Eliot worked fourteen or fifteen hours a day, and in 1918 had a brief affair with Russell; it is not known if Eliot was aware of this. Eliot himself, under strain from his heavy workload, concern about his father's health, and the stress of the ongoing war, was also suffering from poor health, to the extent that his doctor had ordered him not to write prose for six months. In
5904-469: Was obliged, however, to take a job at Lloyds Bank in March 1917, earning a salary of £270 in 1918 for a role interpreting the balance sheets of foreign banks. He would work at the bank for the next nine years. He began to work as an assistant editor of literary magazine The Egoist on the side, his salary of £9 per quarter partly financed by John Quinn , Ezra Pound 's patron. Eliot also began to write on
5986-401: Was originally handwritten by Eliot in the 1922 Boni & Liveright edition of the poem presented to Pound; it was included in later editions. Eliot is quoting both Canto XXVI of Dante 's Purgatorio and Pound's The Spirit of Romance (1910), which contains a chapter with the title "Il Miglior Fabbro" and which quotes that section of Purgatorio . Dante pays the troubadour Arnaut Daniel
6068-491: Was positive, and other admirers included E. M. Forster and Cyril Connolly . Contemporary poets and young writers responded to the poem's modern style and content, a mini-phenomenon later described as "a cult of 'The Waste Landers ' ". Subsequent reviews and criticism debated the value of some of Eliot's innovations. His notes and quotations were one source of disagreement: they were considered either "distracting or confusing if not pedantic and unpoetic", or "the very basis of
6150-413: Was published in 1917 thanks to the efforts of Pound. Publishers were not confident in its success, and it was published by Harriet Shaw Weaver of The Egoist only with funding provided by Pound's wife Dorothy , although Eliot was unaware of this arrangement. It generated very little interest until after the publication of The Waste Land , and did not sell its initial run of 500 copies until 1922. Poems
6232-488: Was published in 1919 by the Woolfs' Hogarth Press , again having been turned down by several other publishers. By 1920 Eliot had established himself as a reputed critic, and the publication of Ara Vos Prec and the US publication of Poems generated notable press coverage. His 1920 collection of essays, The Sacred Wood , met with mixed reviews, and Eliot felt it should have been revised further. Eliot probably worked on
6314-457: Was raped and turned into a nightingale, and the poem depicts her as still suffering at the hands of an uncaring world. This moves to a conversation between an anxious woman and the thoughts of her husband, who does not reply—his thoughts are preoccupied with loss and death. The second part of the section is set in an East End pub and features a conversation between working-class Cockney women. They discuss childbearing, infidelity and abortion in
6396-415: Was reached where, in addition to the $ 150, Eliot would be awarded The Dial ' s second annual prize for outstanding service to letters, which carried an award of $ 2,000. In New York, in late summer, Boni & Liveright made an agreement with The Dial allowing the magazine to be the first to publish the poem in the US, on the condition that they purchase 350 copies of the book at discount (increasing
6478-481: Was the first publication to print Eliot's accompanying notes, which he had added to pad the piece out and thereby address Liveright's concerns about its length. In September 1923, the Hogarth Press , a private press run by Eliot's friends Leonard and Virginia Woolf , published the first UK book edition of The Waste Land in a run of approximately 460 copies. Eliot, whose 1922 annual salary at Lloyds Bank
6560-619: Was to receive a royalty of 15% for a book version of the poem planned for autumn publication, although Liveright was concerned that the work was too short. Eliot was still under contract with his previous publisher Alfred Knopf , which gave Knopf the rights to Eliot's next two books, but in April Eliot managed to secure a release from that agreement. Eliot also sought a deal with magazines. He had become friends with Scofield Thayer , editor of literary magazine The Dial , while at Milton Academy and Harvard College , and Eliot had offered
6642-450: Was travelling on to Lausanne for treatment by Dr Roger Vittoz, who had been recommended to him by Ottoline Morrell ; Vivienne was to stay at a sanatorium just outside Paris. While under Vittoz's care, Eliot completed the first draft of The Waste Land . Eliot returned from Switzerland to Paris in early January 1922 with the 19-page draft version of the poem; his treatment with Dr Vittoz proved to have been very successful, at least in
6724-446: Was £500 ($ 2,215), made approximately £630 ($ 2,800) with The Dial , Boni & Liveright, and Hogarth Press publications. Eliot sent the original manuscript drafts of the poem as a gift to John Quinn, believing it to be worthwhile to preserve the effects of Pound's editing; they arrived in New York in January 1923. Upon Quinn's death in 1924 they were inherited by his sister Julia Anderson, and for many years they were believed lost. In
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