Why didn’t he commit suicide? 

Frank Kermode

Here, in six hundred double-column pages, we have what the editor describes as ‘the most comprehensive collection of contemporary reviews of T.S. Eliot’s work as it appeared’. There are other such collections, but this one will be enough for most people. The editor is American, and she is contributing to a series which gives the same treatment to Emerson, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Faulkner, Melville and so on. Eliot’s presence on this list amounts to a claim that Eliot is an American author, a decision qualified by a willingness to be fair to the disappointed British: ‘since Eliot’s work was published first in London, this collection includes British and Irish reviews.’ Nevertheless, ‘spelling and punctuation have been changed to American style throughout.’ So much tedious editorial labour has been devoted to exhibit this anglicised and europhile poet as an American national treasure.

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