Essays Ancient and Modern

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936 First American edition, first printing, with first edition statement to copyright page. Presentation copy, signed and inscribed by Eliot to his close friend, English priest Vigo Auguste Demant: "To V. A. Demant / with the author's / homage / T. S. Eliot / 10. i. 38. [underlined]." Publisher's blue cloth, with spine lettered in gilt; in its original gray dust jacket, with front panel and spine lettered in red. Near fine book, with some toning to spine, bright gilt, spine ends lightly rubbed, a few light marks to spine, and some offsetting to endpapers; very good unclipped dust jacket, with heavy toning to spine, shallow chipping to spine ends (publisher's name at foot of spine partially affected), a small hole to rear panel, a chip to bottom edge of rear panel, a touch of blue soiling to top of rear panel, and slightly nicked corners. Overall, a wonderful association between two important and influential 20th century intellectuals. Gallup A31b. Essays Ancient and Modern features the following Eliot essays: "Lancelot Andrewes," "John Bramhall," "Francis Herbert Bradley," "Baudelaire in Our Time," "The Humanism of Irving Babbitt," "Religion and Literature," "Catholicism and International Order," "The 'Pensées' of Pascal," "Modern Education and the Classics," and "In Memoriam." In the Preface, Eliot explains how the book was released as a new edition of the essay collection For Lancelot Andrewes, with changes being the omission of three essays (on Middleton, Crashaw, and Machiavelli) and the addition of five that were previously uncollected. Eliot writes, "I offer this book, as the title implies, only as a miscellaneous collection, having no greater unity than that of having been written by the same person." Vigo Auguste Demant (1893- 1983) was a British Anglican priest who is noted in the ODNB as "the major theoretician in the Christendom Group of Anglican Catholic thinkers, whose concern was to establish the centrality of what they termed 'Christian Sociology,' an analysis of society fundamentally rooted in a Catholic and incarnational theology." T. S. Eliot and Demant were friends and fellow members of the Moot, a Christian intellectual group that sought to clarify and revitalize religion in modern society. On August 8, 1940, T. S. Eliot wrote an unsolicited recommendation of Demant for a canonry at Westminster, which included the lines: "My friend the Reverend V. A. Demant, whom I have been associated with intellectually for some years… is, in my opinion, one of the most brilliant or perhaps the most brilliant, of the younger theologians in England, and I also consider him thoroughly sound both in theology and politics." In the Preface to Essays Ancient and Modern, Eliot notes that the essay "Religion and Literature" was "originally given as one in a series of addresses arranged in 1934 by the Rev. V. A. Demant…". Demant spoke at Eliot's funeral Mass at St. Stephen's Church on February 17, 1965. T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) is recognized as perhaps the greatest of all the modernist poets, whose groundbreaking works "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," The Waste Land (1922), and Four Quartets (1936 - 1942) had a seismic impact on the literary landscape. The absence of religious belief in modern society is a recurring theme in his work. Eliot was also extremely influential as a literary critic and changed the lens through which poetry was viewed and understood, with essays including "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919). In 1948, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.. Inscribed by Author. First American Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Dust Jacket Included.