T. S. Eliot and the Art of Collaboration

Richard Badenhausen examines the crucial role that collaboration with other writers played in the development of T. S. Eliot's works from the earliest poetry and unpublished prose to the late plays. He demonstrates Eliot's dependence on collaboration in order to create, but also his struggle to accept the implications of the process. In case-studies of Eliot's collaborations, Badenhausen reveals the complexities of Eliot's theory and practice of collaboration. Examining a wide range of familiar and uncollected materials, Badenhausen explores Eliot's social, psychological, textual encounters with collaborators such as Ezra Pound, John Hayward, Martin Browne, and Vivienne Eliot, among others. Finally, this study shows how Eliot's later work increasingly accommodates his audience as he attempted to apply his theories of collaboration more broadly to social, cultural, and political concerns.