The Waste Land

By T. S. Eliot and Mint Editions

The Waste Land (1922) is a poem by T.S. Eliot. After suffering a nervous breakdown, Eliot took a leave of absence from his job at a London bank to stay with his wife Vivienne at the coastal town of Margate. He worked on the poem during these months before showing an early draft to Ezra Pound, who helped edit the poem toward publication. The Waste Land, dedicated to Pound, includes hundreds of quotations of and allusions to such figures as Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Saint Augustine, Chaucer, Baudelaire, and Whitman, to name only a few.

Divided into five sections—“The Burial of the Dead;” “A Game of Chess;” “The Fire Sermon;” “Death by Water;” and “What the Thunder Said”—The Waste Land is a complex poem that translates Eliot’s fragile emotional state and increasing dissatisfaction with married life into an apocalyptic vision of postwar England. The poem begins with a meditation on despair before moving to a polyphonic narration by figures on the theme. The third section focuses on death and denial through the lens of eastern and western religions, using Saint Augustine as a prominent figure. Eliot then moves from a brief lyric poem to an apocalyptic conclusion, declaring: “He who was living is now dead / We who were living are now dying / With a little patience.” Both personal and universal, global in scope and intensely insular, The Waste Land changed the course of literary history, inspiring countless poets and establishing Eliot’s reputation as one of the foremost artists of his generation.

This edition of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mint Editions
• Release date: Feb 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781513284699

T. S. Eliot

THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT was born in St Louis, Missouri, in 1888. He moved to England in 1914 and published his first book of poems in 1917. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Eliot died in 1965.

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Reviews for The Waste Land

[dasam-5 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As is true for most readers, when I first encountered The Waste Land in the 1960s, I found myself in a very foreign poetic land. I read the annotations and explications. I listened to my professors. I reread and mad innumerable margin notes. I felt the poem's power and despair. But its meaning seemed hard to parse.

Now, decades later, rereading yet again, I know the poem and the poem knows me. We still live in The Waste Land. The loss of all mooring after WWI still remains a debris we drift with. But the poem itself seems very approachable now, its discordant ballet of voices powerful as ever, but its sense much more apparent to me.

You must read and reread this poem. My critical opinion of it had moved over time to it being overrated---but now, no. It is a seminal poem of the last century. And its relevance today is profound.

[sylvester_olson · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Yeah, I'm going to be that guy who gives T.S. Elliot 2 stars. Sorry, Mr. Elliot. I'm not a fan of non-narrative poetry. I gave it my best shot, but quite honestly it read like complete gibberish to me.

[deckla_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I can't help it, I have always loved T.S. Eliot's diction and modes of expression. Now I have it in e-book form. I know Thomas Stearns isn't the best model for human behavior, but he surely could express himself. This poem, an elegy, a summoning of Buddhist and Christian traditions, a description of the ruptures of civilization, couldn't be more timely.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While I liked all the classical references (and Tiresias was familiar to me, having just recently reread Oedipus Rex!), I didn't really understand this poem. However, the rhyme and meter are enjoyable so I will be trying this again!

[fuzzi_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was my second attempt to read a book by this author, and I did not appreciate it. To be fair, I'm not much of a poetry fan, so if you like poetry, you might like this.

[michael5rimmer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. - T.S EliotLess understanding on my part, though some communication on Mr. Eliot's, so by his owndefinition, The Waste Land must be genuine poetry. If that sounds less than enthusiastic, it's probably a reflection of my disappointment at not being totally blown away by what is generally reckoned to be one of the greatest poems of the twentieth century. I'm sure the deficit is on my side, and I'll certainly return to this poem as there are undoubtedly depths I've not plumbed.Four stars, nonetheless, because there's some nice stuff about the cruelty of April, drowned Phoenicians, and overheard gossip about abortions.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Blijft een weerbarstig werk. Met de begeleidende commentaar komt de rijkdom wat beter tot zijn recht, maar het hermetisme bemoeilijkt de lectuur toch iets teveel. De persoonlijke interpretatie van Paul Claes (de impotentie van Eliot) op het einde overtuigt niet helemaal.