BIB_ID
160544
Accession number
MA 2252
Creator
Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965.
Display Date
England, 1940 June.
Credit line
Gift of Marion Dorn, 1963.
Description
1 item (1 page) ; 24.7 x 20.4 cm
Notes
In pencil, inscribed, in ink, by the author "for Marion Dorn / in remembrance of / June 7-10, 1940 - / T.S. Eliot."
Housed with a carbon typescript of the final text of 7 captions, with typed signature and dated "9.vi.40."
Eliot says in a letter to Walter McElroy, 19 April 1949, (published on http://tseliot.com/editorials/in-eliots-own-words-occasional-verses ) "I was rather distressed when I found that people regarded it as a poem. I had no idea of writing a poem and I do not wish to reprint it. These words were written for a particular purpose in 1940 to accompany an exhibition of photographs of British war-work to be displayed in New York. Each one of the sentences was meant to apply to and to appear in large letters on the wall together with an appropriate group of photographs, and to my way of thinking the words themselves lose a great deal of their meaning without the photographs they were designed to accompany."
Housed with a carbon typescript of the final text of 7 captions, with typed signature and dated "9.vi.40."
Eliot says in a letter to Walter McElroy, 19 April 1949, (published on http://tseliot.com/editorials/in-eliots-own-words-occasional-verses ) "I was rather distressed when I found that people regarded it as a poem. I had no idea of writing a poem and I do not wish to reprint it. These words were written for a particular purpose in 1940 to accompany an exhibition of photographs of British war-work to be displayed in New York. Each one of the sentences was meant to apply to and to appear in large letters on the wall together with an appropriate group of photographs, and to my way of thinking the words themselves lose a great deal of their meaning without the photographs they were designed to accompany."
Provenance
Gift of Marion Dorn, 1963.
Summary
Being a draft of poetic captions, later titled "Defence the Islands", used in an exhibition of British war photographs, curated by E. McKnight Kauffer and exhibited at the British Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1940; being a draft in eight paragraphs which would appear in final form as seven captions for the exhibition.
Catalog link
Department