When the New York Public Library announced in October 1968 that the Berg Collection had acquired the original manuscript of The Waste Land, one of the most enigmatic mysteries of 20th-century literature was solved. The manuscript, believed to be lost, was in fact kept among the papers of John Quinn, a friend and adviser of Eliot, to whom the poet had sent it in 1922. If the discovery of the manuscript was astonishing, its contents were even more impressive, as the published version of The Waste Land was significantly shorter than the original. How this was reduced and edited is clearly shown in the manuscript through the handwritten notes of Ezra Pound, Eliot's first wife, Vivien, and Eliot himself.

To make this material widely available for study, the poet's widow, Mrs. Valerie Eliot, prepared the present edition in 1971, in which each page of the original manuscript is reproduced in facsimile, with a clear transcription opposite the pages. Mrs. Eliot also included an illuminating introduction, explanatory notes, and cross-references, along with the text of the first published edition of The Waste Land, thereby completing the evolution of the most influential poem in modern literature. To celebrate the centenary of the original poem and the fifty years of the facsimile, Eliot's original pages are published here in the stunning vibrancy of full color for the first time. This edition republishes, with corrections, the text of the 1980 edition and includes an appendix of primary materials that were not previously available.

Pages: 192, Dimensions: 22.4x22.4cm