In T. S. Eliot's own words in 1922: "The leather bound notebook is one which I started in 1909 and in which I entered all my work of that time as I wrote it, so that it is the only original manuscript barring of course rough scraps and notes, which were destroyed at the time, in existence."
When Eliot died in 1965 he had no idea what had happened to this notebook, but it had in fact been sold to the Berg Collection in the New York Public Library in 1958. But no announcement was made until 1968.
The notebook was purchased on Main Street Gloucester, MA, USA. Gloucester was where the Eliot family summered every year in the early 1900's and they owned a house overlooking Eastern Point, now owned by the Eliot trustees and used as a writer's retreat. The contents of this extraordinary manuscript have never before been published in facsimile, and as Robert McCrum says in his foreword, the notebook is "a treasure of double rarity: a document charting the turning-point in twentieth century literature, but also a window onto a lyrical catharsis that its author wished to remain mysterious".
There are 42 poems reproduced, including the original version of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Opposite each hand-written poem is a text transcription. There are no critical notes, therefore the reader is left alone on the page with the author, providing an unparalleled intimacy with the works themselves. This book provides an extraordinary glimpse into the mind of the young man who was to become the most admired poet of the twentieth century.
