T. S. Eliot Foundation

Official account for the T. S. Eliot Foundation, a charity for the promotion of poetry, literacy and all things Eliot. Dead Poets Live: @deadpoets_live

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

📆3 June 1938

'But many of us... do not find out exactly what our job is except through many attempts and failures.'

Eliot's words of advice to pupils at the Truro School in Cornwall in his Speech Day address delivered #onthisday in 1938.

#tseliot

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

Libraries Change Lives Week✨

'...it was the London Library that made my literary journalism possible.'

TSE on his debt to @TheLondonLib

#tseliot #libraries

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

Happy World Sailing Day🌊

TSE sailing off the New England coast during the summer of 1907.

[TS Eliot Society UK @TSEliotSocUK]

“A great theme greatly handled and there is nothing more impressive to be seen in a London theatre.” – Daily Telegraph

T.S. Eliot’s ‘pageant play’ The Rock had its premiere @Sadlers_Wells on this day 28 May 1934

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

Henry also snapped a local minister’s house, Unity Church, and locals looking out across the Mississippi to the partially destroyed Eads Bridge.

‘In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall,
Crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed’

#tseliot #stlouis

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

#OTD in 1896 a cyclone tore through St Louis, tearing down buildings and causing widespread destruction.

The following day Eliot’s brother photographed the aftermath. He captured members of the Eliot family, including a young Eliot perched on the gate, outside their home.

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[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

📆25 May 1941

TSE on how to appreciate #poetry recitals and #Shakespeare

'surely it is necessary to read, to see, to read again, and to see again'.

#tseliot #onthisday

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

T S Eliot's English translation of St John Perse's Anabase was published #OTD in 1930.

The translation was published side by side with the original French, 'so that readers may judge for themselves of the merit and accuracy of the translation, and of the beauty of the original.'

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

‘My favourite essay, I think, is my essay on Dante, not because I know much about Dante, but because I loved what I wrote about.’

'... genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.’

#tseliot #dante #poetry

[T. S. Eliot Prize @tseliotprize]

The T. S. Eliot Foundation is delighted to announce the judges for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2026. Leontia Flynn (Chair) will be joined on the panel by fellow poets Ishion Hutchinson and Daisy Lafarge.

Find out more at https://t.co/hgP2RbopUb!

[Dead Poets Live @deadpoets_live]

The incredible @EdwardBluemel presents ‘Lines Written in Early Spring’ by William Wordsworth.

Edward’s reading forms part of Dead Poets School, our free resource for GCSE students who – in this case – are studying poems on AQA Worlds and Lives.

📸Alex Gabbott

#edwardbluemel

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

...this marble patterned design on the back of some wallpaper. The print run was small, running to about 200 copies.

Eliot’s second volume of poetry included ‘Sweeney among the Nightingales’, ‘Whispers of Immortality’ and ‘Lune de miel’.

#tseliot #poetry #publishing

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

The paper might be brittle, but the colours of the Poems (1919) cover are as vibrant today as they were when Leonard & Virginia Woolf hand painted them at the Hogarth Press in 1919.

Poems was one of the 1st books published by the Woolfs who hand-set the text and created...
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[TS Eliot Society UK @TSEliotSocUK]

Line-up and tickets released for the Annual T.S. Eliot Festival at Little Gidding on Sunday July 5th - details on our News page: https://t.co/Q8YJFmuV38

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

TSE, aged 6, with his father on a boat in the Cape Ann coastal city of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where the Eliot family spent their summers.

Photograph taken in 1895.

#tseliot #gloucesterma

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

On the back of a list of poems for a reading there in May 1955, Eliot has made crib notes for his preamble speech and what he would say in the breaks between poems – these provided a little breathing space, for the audience, as much as for himself, ‘not to fill up time’.

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[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

A selection of Eliot’s handwritten set lists for his poetry readings in America in the 1950s & 1960s.

Eliot’s favourite venue was the Poetry Center @92ndStreetY in New York, where he had ‘never met a more appreciative audience’.

#tseliot #poetryreadings

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[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

‘The poetry of a people takes its life
from the people’s speech and in turn gives life to it'

From Eliot's introduction to his series of Charles Eliot Norton Lectures delivered at Havard University between November 1932 and December 1933.

#tseliot #poetry #theuseofpoetry

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

TSE and the Practical Cat 'Go in for COUNTRY LIFE'...

📆7 May 1931

Eliot's letter to his godson, Tom Faber, written 95 years ago.

#tseliot #practicalcat #thelettersoftseliot #onthisday

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

@FaberBooks

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

CONGRATULATIONS to @catsjellicleball for 9 Tony Awards nominations including Best Musical Revival!

Congratulations to @OfficialALW for Best Orchestrations nomination.

TSE received a posthumous Tony for Best Book of a Musical in 1983. The Award stands proud in the Eliot's home.