In Defence of T.S.Eliot

by Craig Raine

From one of our foremost critics and poets, this volume of essays brings together an eclectic selection of over twenty years of Craig Raine's writings. His pieces, on the literary world and some of its most fascinating figures and classics, bear his hallmark of vitality and distinctive approach. Raine's knowledge of the span of literary theory (and anecdote) and the incisiveness of his thinking uncover as far more contradictory and complex in their successes writers customarily held in reverence. The essays range from a powerful piece on the KGB's literary archive, to thoughts about tragedy in Kipling's life, through Auden, Nabokov, Beckett, to the state of health of Samuel Johnson's testicles. This book celebrates the diversity of the world of books and Raine is a supremely entertaining and thought-provoking guide.

Hardcover

First published October 20, 2000

About the author

Poet and critic Craig Raine was born on 3 December 1944 in Bishop Auckland, England, and read English at Exeter College, Oxford.

He lectured at Exeter College (1971-2), Lincoln College, Oxford, (1974-5), and Christ Church, Oxford, (1976-9), and was books editor for New Review (1977-8), editor of Quarto (1979-80), and poetry editor at the New Statesman (1981). Reviews and articles from this period are collected in Haydn and the Valve Trumpet (1990). He became poetry editor at the London publishers Faber and Faber in 1981, and became a fellow of New College, Oxford, in 1991. He gained a Cholmondeley Award in 1983 and the Sunday Times Writer of the Year Award in 1998. He is founder and editor of the literary magazine Areté.

His poetry collections include the acclaimed The Onion, Memory (1978), A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979), A Free Translation (1981), Rich (1984) and History: The Home Movie (1994), an epic poem that celebrates the history of his own family and that of his wife. His libretto The Electrification of the Soviet Union (1986) is based on The Last Summer, a novella by Boris Pasternak. Collected Poems 1978-1999 was published in 1999. A new long poem A la recherche du temps perdu, an elegy to a former lover, and a collection of his reviews and essays, entitled In Defence of T. S. Eliot, were both published in 2000. Another collection of essays, More Dynamite, appeared in 2013.

Craig Raine lives in Oxford. His latest books are How Snow Falls (2010), a new poetry collection; and two novels, Heartbreak (2010), and The Divine Comedy (2012).