1942 Little Gidding

Description

First Edition, Original Binding, Publishers' Original Binding

First edition. The fourth of the Four Quartets, a set of poems that were published over a six-year period and discuss time, perspective, humanity, and salvation. First published in September 1942 after being delayed for over a year because of the air-raids on Great Britain during the Second World War and Eliot's declining health. The title refers to a small Anglican community in Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, established by Nicholas Ferrar in the seventeenth century and scattered during the English Civil War. The poem uses the combined image of fire and Pentecostal fire to emphasise the need for purification and purgation. Written by Thomas Stearns Eliot, an American-born English poet, essayist and playwright considered a leading figure in English-language Modernist poetry.