T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

William Baker (Northern Illinois University); Katie Wales (University of Nottingham)

Ed. by Chris Baldick, Goldsmiths College, University of London
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Birmingham Newman University), Louise McDonald (Birmingham Newman University), Andrew Radford (University of Glasgow)

Dates

First circulation or publication Nov 1925

Places

England (Country of Origin; Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)

Resources

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Recommended Reading

The Hollow Men

is a poem by T. S. Eliot in five numbered parts, first published as a complete sequence in Eliot’s collection

Poems 1909-1925

(November 1925)

It was the only new poem in the collection, being the first of Eliot’s poems to appear since

The Waste Land

(1922). Four of its five sections had been published separately in magazines in 1924-25. In a letter of February 1923, Eliot had indicated his intention “to throw off

The Waste Land”

(cited Ricks & McCue I: 712), but in later remarks he was to characterise “The Hollow Men” as the exhausted conclusion of his pre-Christian Waste-Land phase, regarding it as a poem of despair. The poem’s title, as Eliot acknowledged, was suggested by William Morris’s prose romance

The Hollow Land

(1856)

and Rudyard Kipling’s poem…

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2032 words

Citation: Baker, William, Katie Wales. "The Hollow Men". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 August 2023 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=585, accessed 09 May 2024.]

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