This is the first book to identify and trace a theme of old age running throughout T.S. Eliot’s oeuvre. Previously unacknowledged, Eliot’s concern with ageing can now be seen as a significant element in his work, resonating throughout his poetry, his literary criticism and his dramas.

Beginning with the works Eliot is known to have read as a youth, and examining his first unpublished poems, the book explores the origins of his concern with old age. It shows that the theme occurs with surprising frequency in the writings of a young man – a quarter of the poems in Eliot’s first published collection contain references to old age. It establishes the significance of “old men” throughout his canon; as the subject of three dramatic monologues; as “the most important personage” (Eliot) in ’The Waste Land’; and as the perspective behind Four Quartets. For the first time this theme is identified and shown through close reading and analysis of its use to be a recurring and significant aspect of Eliot’s poetry.

Paul Keers is Chair of the T.S. Eliot Society (UK), and was described by the Sunday Times as “the keeper of the poet’s flame”. His work on T.S. Eliot has been published in the academic journals Essays in Criticism (Oxford), and The T.S. Eliot Studies Annual (Liverpool University Press). He was consultant for the BBC Radio 3 centenary dramatisation of ‘The Waste Land’.