Prufrock and Other Observations

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By T. S. Eliot & Mint Editions

Publisher Description

Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) is a collection of poems by T.S. Eliot. Published following the successful appearance of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in the June 1915 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Prufrock and Other Observations established Eliot’s reputation as a leading English poet and pioneering literary Modernist.

Opening with “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the collection begins with an invocation of Dante, whom Eliot saw as an important innovator of a polyphonic, referential poetry capable of interrogating and dramatizing the construction and representation of the self. The poem is written from the perspective of a repressed, despairing middle-aged man who meditates on his relationships with women and the regrets he has accumulated with age. In “Preludes,” a poem of urban malaise, Eliot “thinks of all the hands / That are raising dingy shades / In a thousand furnished rooms,” and reaches for an understanding of the world as “some infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing.” Other poems include “Morning at the Window,” another brief vision of city life, “The Boston Evening Transcript,” a satirical reverie on time and community, and “Cousin Nancy,” a humorous lyric celebrating Miss Nancy Ellicott, who unabashedly “smoked, / And danced all the modern dances. Both personal and universal, global in scope and intensely insular, Eliot’s poetry changed the course of literary history, inspiring countless poets and establishing his reputation as one of the foremost artists of his generation.

This edition of T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

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4 Reviews

3.5

Nasar

Created almost 2 years ago

“Rhapsody on a Windy Night Twelve o'clock. Along the reaches of the street Held in a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Dissolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations, Its divisions and precisions, Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium. Half-past one, The street lamp sputtered, The street lamp muttered, The street lamp said, 'Regard that woman Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door Which opens on her like a grin. You see the border of her dress Is torn and stained with sand, And you see the corner of her eye Twists like a crooked pin.' The memory throws up high and dry A crowd of twisted things; A twisted branch upon the beach Eaten smooth, and polished As if the world gave up The secret of its skeleton, Stiff and white. A broken spring in a factory yard, Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left Hard and curled and ready to snap. Half-past two, The street lamp said, 'Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter, Slips out its tongue And devours a morsel of rancid butter.' So the hand of a child, automatic, Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay. I could see nothing behind that child's eye. I have seen eyes in the street Trying to peer through lighted shutters, And a crab one afternoon in a pool, An old crab with barnacles on his back, Gripped the end of a stick which I held him. Half-past three, The lamp sputtered, The lamp muttered in the dark. The lamp hummed: 'Regard the moon, La lune ne garde aucune rancune, She winks a feeble eye, She smiles into corners. She smoothes the hair of the grass. The moon has lost her memory. A washed-out smallpox cracks her face, Her hand twists a paper rose, That smells of dust and old Cologne, She is alone With all the old nocturnal smells That cross and cross across her brain.' The reminiscence comes Of sunless dry geraniums And dust in crevices, Smells of chestnuts in the streets, And female smells in shuttered rooms, And cigarettes in corridors And cocktail smells in bars. The lamp said, 'Four o'clock, Here is the number on the door. Memory! You have the key, The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair, Mount. The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall, Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.' The last twist of the knife.”

Ashleigh Payne

Created almost 2 years ago

Audrey

Created almost 2 years ago

boastybooks

Created over 2 years ago

About T. S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) was a British poet of American descent. Born in St. Louis, Missouri to a prominent family from Boston, Eliot was raised in a religious and intellectual household. Childhood ailments left Eliot isolated for much of his youth, encouraging his interest in literature. At the age of ten, he entered a preparatory school where he studied Latin, Ancient Greek, French, and German. During this time, he also began writing poetry. From 1906 to 1909, he studied at Harvard University, earning a Master of Arts in English literature and introducing himself to the poetry of the French Symbolists. Over the next several years, he studied Indian philosophy and Sanskrit at the Harvard Graduate School before attending Oxford on a scholarship to Merton College. Tiring of academic life, however, he abandoned his studies and moved to London, where he met the poet Ezra Pound. With Pound’s encouragement and editing, Eliot published such poems as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915) and “The Waste Land” (1922), works that earned him a reputation as one of the twentieth century’s leading poets and a major figure in literary Modernism. Living in England with his wife Vivienne—from whom he would separate in 1932—Eliot worked as a prominent publisher for Faber and Faber, working with such poets as W.H. Auden and Ted Hughes. He converted to Anglicanism in 1927, an event that inspired his poem “Ash-Wednesday” (1930) and led to the composition of his masterpiece Four Quartets (1943). Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.