This webpage is an index to online copies of all eight of T.S. Eliot's "London Letter" features published in The Dial.
In 1921 and 1922 T.S. Eliot was the London correspondent to The Dial magazine published in New York by his Milton Academy and Harvard University schoolmate Scofield Thayer. The Dial published eight letters written by Eliot about the cultural scene in England. Although Eliot continued to have articles published in The Dial he no longer had time to keep up the London Letter series as he started editing his own publication, The Criterion, the first issue being printed in October, 1922.
The first "London Letter" essays (the ones that were published in 1921) are also available in print in the book The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose edited by Lawrence Rainey (see below.) Rainey has added extensive notes on the people, books and events written about by Eliot. On page 202 Rainey also produces evidence that Eliot's first "London Letter" was actually written in January, 1921, not March, 1921.
To read Eliot's "London Letter" essays use one of these methods:
Date of issue | Topics | Citation | Date of letter | Gallup # |
April 1921 |
|
vol. LXX, no. 4 (April, 1921) pp. 448-453 |
March 1921 | C123 |
June 1921 |
vol. LXX, no. 6 (June, 1921) pp. 686-691 |
May 1921 | C124 | |
August 1921 |
|
vol. LXXI, no. 2 (August, 1921) pp. 213-217 |
July 1921 | C126 |
October 1921 |
|
vol. LXXI, no. 4 (October, 1921) pp. 452-455 |
September 1921 | C127 |
May 1922 |
|
vol. LXXII, no. 5 (May, 1922) pp. 510-513 |
April 1922 | C130 |
July 1922 |
|
vol. LXXIII, no. 1 (July, 1922) pp. 94-96 |
June 1922 | C133 |
September 1922 | The Novel: |
vol. LXXIII, no. 3 (September, 1922) pp. 329-331 |
August 1922 | C134 |
December 1922 |
|
vol. LXXIII, no. 6 (December, 1922) pp. 659-663 |
November 1922 | C136 |
To allow researchers seeking out or creating a citation for a quotation, page numbers from The Dial have been inserted into the HTML markup of this file. Use your browser's "view source" feature (or equivalent) to view them.
Each paragraph in Eliot's text has been anchored with its paragraph number. The paragraphs can be linked to individually in this manner: #paragraph-1
If the mouse is hovered over each sub-header and paragraph in Eliot's text many browsers will display a tool-tip that will name the anchor. These can be linked to in the same manner as the paragraphs above.
Other useful anchors are: #top, #navigation #introduction, #anchors, #text #bottom