Fallout From T.S. Eliot's Love Letters Continues

At The Guardian, Alex Clark contributes an article on the release of T.S. Eliot's letters to his "muse," Emily Hale. "Fifty years after her death," Clark writes, "the letters that Emily Hale, a woman described most frequently, and tellingly, as 'muse', received from the poet TS Eliot were released by Princeton University, as per her instructions." Picking up from there: 

They largely cover the period between 1932 and 1947, beginning 20 years after Hale and Eliot had first met at Harvard Graduate School; in between, Eliot had married Vivienne Haigh-Wood, from whom he formally separated in 1933.

Twenty-four hours after the release of Hale’s letters, the TS Eliot Foundation published a statement from beyond the grave, written by the author of the letters himself in 1960 and expressly designed to accompany their unveiling. There is, indeed, a statement about the statement – “It has come to my ears that she [Hale] has added, or is preparing to add, some sort of commentary of her own”. There then follows what appears to be a piece of pre-emptive exculpation, complete with reference to Henry James’s exploration of unscrupulous literary wrangling, The Aspern Papers, and an account of the changes in Eliot’s feelings towards Hale over the decades.

Read on at The Guardian.