The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound

1971

Brasch PS3509 L43 W3 1971

London: Faber and Faber

Eliot recycles romance and the Grail legend in his modernist masterpiece The Waste Land. Influenced by Jessie Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, Eliot takes readers on a journey across the waste land of the modern world. In the concluding stanzas, he holds out hope of rebirth and healing, as his Fisher King sits, with ‘the arid plain’ behind him, fishing, asking the right question, and preparing to set his lands in order. Eliot’s published poem owes much to the editing work of Pound, whose changes can be seen in this annotated facsimile and transcript of Eliot’s original drafts.