T.S. Eliot’s Letters To Emily Hale to Be Unveiled

Approximately 1,000 letters from T.S. Eliot to long-time friend and confident Emily Hale will be unveiled this week. Much speculation has been made about the nature of their relationship, and scholars hope the cache of letters will provide illuminating details regarding Hale's significance in the poet's life. For the Los Angeles Times, Christina Paciolla reports:

After more than 60 years spent sealed up in a library storage facility, about 1,000 letters written by poet T.S. Eliot to confidante Emily Hale will be unveiled this week, and scholars hope they will reveal the extent of a relationship that’s been speculated about for decades.

Many consider Hale not only to be Eliot’s close friend, but also his muse, and they hope their correspondence will offer insight into the more intimate details of the poet’s life and work. Students, researchers and scholars can read the letters at Princeton University Library starting Thursday.

“I think it’s perhaps the literary event of the decade,” says Anthony Cuda, an Eliot scholar and director of the T.S. Eliot International Summer School. “I don’t know of anything more awaited or significant. It’s momentous to have these letters coming out.”

Lifelong friends, Hale and Eliot exchanged letters for about 25 years beginning in 1930. The two met in 1912 in Cambridge, Mass., but did not rekindle their friendship until 1927. Eliot was already living in England, and Hale taught drama at U.S. universities, including Scripps College in California.

Continue on at the LA Times. For a statement about the release of the letters from Eliot himself, head here.