SKU: 33413845379

ELIOT, T.S. After Strange Gods.

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ELIOT, T.S. After Strange Gods.The Degradation of the Modern World ELIOT, T. S. After Strange Gods. London: Faber and Faber. 1934. 8vo. Original black cloth lettered in gilt to spine, in the dust jacket priced 3s. 6d. net to the front flap; pp. 68; spine tips rubbed, cloth a little faded to upper and lower edges, small white mark to upper edge of rear panel, rear panel of wrapper detached (discreetly repaired), significant loss to spine, corners, upper edges, various nicks, closed

The Degradation of the Modern World

ELIOT, T.S. After Strange Gods. London: Faber and Faber. 1934.

8vo. Original black cloth lettered in gilt to spine, in the dust-jacket priced 3s. 6d. net to the front flap; pp. 68; spine tips rubbed, cloth a little faded to upper and lower edges, small white mark to upper edge of rear panel, rear panel of wrapper detached (discreetly repaired), significant loss to spine, corners, upper edges, various nicks, closed tears and creasing; a very good copy, in a fragmentary but bright wrapper; signed and dated by Eliot (22 May 1947)to title-page.

A scarce signed first printing of Eliot’s troubled and troubling 1933 Page-Barbour Lectures, a volume withdrawn by the author after a single reprint the same year.

After Strange Gods collects the series of three Page-Barbour Lectures delivered at the University of Virginia in 1933. The jacket text (most likely written by Eliot himself) states that the lectures develop, ‘after fifteen years’ interval, the implications of his essay ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’. If that essay, printed in Eliot’s first volume of literary essays, The Sacred Wood (1920), offers a theory of literary tradition and innovation (familiar to generations of English Literature undergraduates to this day), the Virginia lectures ‘were not undertaken as exercises in literary criticism [and] not designed to set forth, even in the most summary form, my opinions of the work of contemporary writers’. Instead, ‘they are concerned with certain ideas in illustration of which I have drawn upon the work of some of the few modern writers whose work I know.’ Nonetheless, in seeking to illustrate his thesis that, as the jacket concisely has it, ‘the weakness of modern literature, indicative of the weakness of the modern world in general, is a religious weakness; […] that all our social problems, including those of literature and criticism, begin and end in the religious problem’, he looks closely at the writings of Hardy, Kipling, Lawrence, and others, in relation to ideas of orthodoxy, and ‘its opposite, heterodoxy, for which I shall also use the term heresy’. For Eliot, Hardy, an atheist (though the word is not used), represents ‘an interesting example of a powerful personality uncurbed by any institutional attachment or by submission to any objective beliefs […]’, while Lawrence ‘is for my purposes, an almost perfect example of the heretic.’

The book was withdrawn by Eliot after just one reprint, in the same year as the first printing, and never reissued. This was primarily owing to a passage on pp. 19-21 advocating ‘unity of religious background’ which is hard not to read as squarely antisemitic (though many have tried). In his short book on Eliot, Stephen Spender (who doesn’t) notes that the period of the lectures ‘was a time of extreme tension for [Eliot], when he was making up his mind to separate from his [first] wife’, and that ‘the unhappiness shows in the lectures.’ He also records Eliot’s assertion ‘that when he wrote After Strange Gods he was in a state of unhappiness which distorted his judgement.’

Owing to Eliot’s complex relationship with the book, and the relatively few copies in circulation, signed or inscribed copies have always been scarce.

Gallup A25a. See Spender, T. S. Eliot (1975); Ricks, T. S. Eliot and Prejudice (1988).

SKU: 2124307

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SKU: 33413845379

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S. G.
Massapequa, US
★★★★★ 5
Beautiful Journal Type of book
Format: Paperback
As my friend said when she opened it...it's so beautiful, I don't want to write in it! Just a paperback type of journal, but for Lilias Trotter admirers, it's a treasure.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2022
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DL
Lake Worth, US
★★★★★ 5
This artist of faith has a very inspiring and uplifting story.
Format: Paperback
This book was a gift to a family member. The family member was not only touched by the thoughtfulness but by the story and art in this little book. Lilias Trotter was a remarkable woman of true, deep faith and made a difference in so many lives. We could all learn from her example and be inspired by her commitment to the people whose lives she touched. Recommend this book for artists and born again believers alike. God is in the details!
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Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2023
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Jane
Fort Morgan, US
★★★★★ 5
Beautiful Journal
Format: Paperback
This journal which includes paintings and quotes from Lilias Trotter is lovely. In fact you may enjoy looking at the pages even more than journaling. Excellent gift for friends.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2022
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Miriam Dixon
Boise, US
★★★★★ 5
Lilias Trotter is amazing!
Format: Paperback
Lilias Trotter is inspired in her prose and beautiful watercolors. Wonderful!
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Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2022
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Darcy W.
Belleville, US
★★★★★ 5
A beautifully crafted invitation to journal
Format: Paperback
Lilias Trotter Legacy’s latest book Beholdings is not so much a text as it is a beautifully crafted invitation. Inspired by the journals and sketches of Lilias Trotter (1853-1928—English missionary to Algeria, artist, writer, and journaler par excellence), biographer Miriam Rockness invites the reader to try their own hand at journaling, using Trotter as a model and guide. Rockness herself is no stranger to journaling, and her Preface to Beholdings enumerates the many benefits that await any reader who is willing to commit to the discipline for a period of time. In the short term, Rockness describes how journaling encourages one to focus, to pay attention, to take the time to behold the beauty in the world before one’s very eyes. Each page following the Preface includes a quote designed to stir the imagination, and an image from Trotter’s journals to illustrate what it means to behold an acorn, a flower petal, a sunrise in the Algerian desert. It is not just to see what is before one’s eyes, but to hold it in the mind’s eye and cherish it. As Simone Weil said, “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.” It is this kind of attention that Rockness encourages the journaler to cultivate, and it is the kind of attention that Lilias Trotter so artfully illustrates. There is ample space on each page for the journaler, thus inspired, to record his or her observations, musings, sketches, or doodles. In the longer term, Rockness suggests that journaling helps cultivate a sense of proportion and perspective. She describes looking back with her husband over her journals from years before, reliving the moments that might otherwise have been forgotten, and allowing those glimpses in the rear view mirror to inform present day experience. Sometimes one finds that images seen in the rear view mirror really are smaller than they appeared at the time! In addition to being an incitement to journaling, Beholdings is a beautifully produced creation in its own right. Great thought has gone into the selection of the typeface, the texture and feel of the paper, the quality of the images reproduced. This makes Beholdings not only a delight to own, but also an exquisite gift to offer. My advice: buy one for yourself, and another for someone you love.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2022

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