Illustrated poems for Christmas
(‘Nobody else seemed to want the titleafterward,’ said Eliot of the series, ‘so I kept it for myself.’) Thatpamphlet series inventively paired an unpublished poem by a leadingwriter of the day with new artwork from an eminent artist.
Acherished part of his oeuvre, the ‘Ariel Poems’ of T. S. Eliot wereoriginally commissioned for a pamphlet series of the same name thatfirst ran between 1927 and 1931. (‘Nobody else seemed to want the titleafterward,’ said Eliot of the series, ‘so I kept it for myself.’) Thatpamphlet series inventively paired an unpublished poem by a leadingwriter of the day with new artwork from an eminent artist. Thomas Hardy,Siegfried Sassoon, Barnett Freedman and John Nash were among thecontributors to the first set, which broadly carried a Christmas themeand which sold for one shilling. The publisher’s hope was that thepamphlets might double-up as greeting cards, and Eliot himself sent themas festive gifts to the writers on Faber’s poetry list.
This handsome newpublication brings together, for the first time in a single edition, thesix poems that T. S. Eliot wrote for the series, and in so doingrestores them to the company of the artworks that originally partneredthem.
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