[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
On 17 Feb 1922 he wrote to Richard Aldington, another of the poem’s earliest readers (and one of the founding subscribers to Bel Esprit): “What you say about my poem gave me great pleasure and gratification · · · I have been hesitating over the Dial’s offer of $150.” Now, however, a misunderstanding caused both TSE and Thayer to take offence. Valerie Eliot’s account is not fully accurate: “While completing The Waste Land in January Eliot had written to Scofield Thayer to ask what The Dial would offer for it, and the answer, $150, sight unseen, did not displease him. But his thoughts were already turning to book publication when he and Pound heard that the magazine had paid George Moore a hundred pounds for his short story, Peronnik the Fool; they were so incensed that Eliot cabled Thayer that he could not accept less than £856” (WLFacs xxiii–xxiv). As early as 27 Aug 1912, Pound had written to his father that Moore was “regarded mostly as a joke, or ‘a stupid old man’”, but it was TSE who heard about the payment to Moore and was incensed, and he acted on his own initiative, informing Pound only afterwards, on 12 Mar: “As it is I wired him some days ago that I would take fifty pounds and no less.” This would have been about $250. Unfortunately, as received, the cable read: “CANNOT ACCEPT UNDER !8!56 POUNDS = ELIOT +”. (There were no separate number keys on the telegraphic keyboards of the period. Instead numbers and various other characters were typed as the equivalent of the upper case. If, at some stage in the transmission, the number setting was accidentally applied to FIFTY this would result in !8!56.) The mistake in the telegram compounded a misapprehension, since the Dial was not in fact paying Moore an inflated rate—as TSE was to acknowledge to Watson on 15 Aug, letters between TSE and Thayer crossed in the post, relations broke down, and TSE withdrew the poem on 16 Mar (Thayer to Pound, 30 Apr, in Pound, Thayer, Watson, & The Dial). Only thanks to Thayer’s colleagues James Sibley Watson (in Paris) and Gilbert Seldes (in New York) did The Waste Land eventually appear in the Dial. Hearing of the breakdown, Pound wrote again to Jeanne Robert Foster [6 May], asking: “What wd. Vanity Fair pay Eliot for ‘Waste Land’. cd. yr. friend there get in touch with T.S.E., address 12 Wigmore St., London W.1.” (Houghton).
Negotiations on behalf of the Dial were taken up by Watson. Pound saw TSE in Verona on 2 June 1922, and then met Watson in Paris on 19 July, reporting to Dorothy Pound that he was “amiable · · · wants T’s poem for Dial”. Watson then met Thayer in Berlin, where they discussed offering TSE the incentive of the Dial prize of $2,000 in addition to their fee of $150.
On 27 July 1922 Watson again met Pound, who wrote to TSE on behalf of the Dial (as Watson reported to Thayer, 29 July). TSE replied to Pound immediately, on 28 July: “I will let you have a copy of The Waste Land for confidential use as soon as I can make one. Of the two available copies, one has gone to Quinn to present to Liveright on completion of the contract, and the other is the only one I possess. I infer from your remarks that Watson is at present in Paris. I have no objection to either his or Thayer’s seeing the manuscript.” TSE’s term “the manuscript” might refer to the fresh copy he was promising or to an earlier version which would serve to show the Dial the nature of the poem. On 12 Aug, Watson wrote to Thayer: “Eliot seems in a conciliatory mood. The poem is [added: better than] not so bad.” Watson had evidently seen a typescript, but not one he was free to send on to Thayer. Perhaps he had seen a working draft from January that Pound had kept after his exchange of editorial letters with TSE; if so, it has disappeared. On 16 Aug Watson wrote again to Thayer, having now received the fresh typescript that TSE had promised:
In response to Pound’s letter Eliot has assumed a more conciliatory attitude and has sent on a copy of Waste Land for our perusal. I am forwarding it to you. I am sorry that Pound’s vagueness in writing caused Eliot to send the copy to Paris instead of to you direct, but I suppose it will do for a starter. Anyway I wrote him more plainly about the prize and await his answer. I found the poem disappointing on first reading but after a third shot I think it is up to his usual.
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
Typescript copies were made at the Hotel Meurice in Paris for Thayer and Watson, and survive, respectively in the Beinecke and Berg collections. (For the puzzling relation between them, see Textual History headnote, 2. NON-AUTHORIAL TYPESCRIPTS.)
When he wrote to Thayer on 16 Aug, Watson had not yet received a letter TSE had written the previous day: “I have not only given Mr. Liveright the first publication (book) rights, but also have executed the Contract, under which he is to pay me $150 on publication. I suppose that the poem is now going to press · · · Subject to Mr. Liveright’s consent, I would let the Dial publish the poem for $150, not before November 1st. In this event, I would forego the $150 advance from Mr. Liveright, and he would delay publication as a book · · · on the possibility of the book’s getting the prize, which might increase the sales.”
A deal looked possible, but there followed a telegram from TSE to Watson on 17 Aug: “PLEASE TAKE NO STEPS AWAIT NEW LETTER ELIOT”. The new letter, dated 21 Aug, expressed a change of heart: “now it seems to me that it is far too late and that matters have gone too far for me to change my plans · · · I should not feel justified in troubling Mr. Quinn in any case, and I should not feel justified in troubling Mr. Liveright unless the alteration were to his advantage as well as mine. Furthermore to put the matter frankly, the advantage to me would be nil unless the receipt of the prize were to form the basis of a contract which of course you would not be likely to give. Let us hope that on a future occasion, if I survive to write another poem, no such difficulty will arise.” Also on 21 Aug, however, TSE wrote to Quinn: “A few days ago I had an attractive proposal from Mr. Watson of the Dial who was very anxious to publish it · · · They suggested getting Liveright to postpone the date of publication as a book, but I have written to them to say that it seemed to me too late to be proper to make any change now.” He told Pound, 30 Aug: “I received a letter from your friend Watson most amiable in tone · · · offering $150 · · · and (in the strictest confidence) the award for virtue also. Unfortunately, it seemed considerably too late, as I had the preceding day got the contract, signed by Liveright and Quinn, book to be out by Nov. 1st etc.)”
“Nevertheless”, Valerie Eliot explained, “Gilbert Seldes, the Managing Editor of the Dial, approached Quinn and Liveright. They met in Quinn’s office on 7 September and soon came to an agreement” (WLFacs xxiv). B. L. Reid gave the new contractual details: “The Dial would publish the poem, without notes, as soon as possible; they would copyright the poem in Eliot’s name, and would pay him for the poem at their standard rates for verse; they would announce that Boni & Liveright would soon publish the poem as a volume, with notes; they bound themselves to award the $2,000 prize to Eliot, and to announce it in advance of the book publication; they agreed also to buy 350 copies of the book when published; Liveright in turn agreed to delay his publication but to accomplish it by January 31, and to pay Eliot his $150 on publication and subsequent royalties as originally stipulated” (Reid 538; Egleston ed. 269–70).
Quinn to TSE, 7 Sept: “The arrangement insures you (a) $150 from Liveright on publication under his contract, (b) the $2,000 award, and (c) the royalties for the publication of the poem in The Dial, which ought to be at least $10 a page, or perhaps more. They used to pay $5 a page for prose articles, and $10 a page for poetry, but perhaps they’ll pay you more than $10 a page. That ought to be $150 or $200 or more” (Egleston ed. 270–71).
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
Pound to Jeanne Robert Foster [30 Sept 1922]: “I hope the Dial thing IS definitely settled. I knew there was a drift in a certain direction. I have not yet had any OFFICIAL information. There were still several ifs in the way when I last heard. The 2000 wd. supposedly act as two Bel Esprit subscriptions, if T.S.E. banked it; which he presumably wd. do. (Let us hope, will do.) I hope to see him in a few weeks tim
e · · · I shall try to place a whoop for the pome The Waste Land as soon as it is in print” (Houghton).
At the same time, TSE had decided to print the poem in the Criterion and was vacillating over how to deploy it. On 30 June he wrote to Aldington that the first issue would include only Parts I and II. Two months later, on 31 Aug he wrote to the printer, Richard Cobden-Sanderson, enclosing “the rest of The Waste Land again”, which suggests that he had originally sent the whole text, then held over III–V. In letters to Cobden-Sanderson (10 Sept) and Antonio Marichalar (16 Sept), he stated that only I and II would appear in the first issue, and on 21 Sept he wrote to Quinn, “I am publishing The Waste Land in two sections in the first and second numbers in the hope that it might bring in a few more readers.” A further change of mind, resolving to print the entire poem in the first issue, came very late. He corrected the final proof of the poem (and perhaps of the entire issue) on 3 Oct, writing to Cobden- Sanderson: “I am enclosing the corrected proof of the rest of The Waste Land.” The issue (dated “October”) probably appeared a week or so later. Pound to his mother, [Oct]: “Criterion meritorious but a bit dull. (vide enclosure)”; to his father, 30 Oct: “Eliot’s new Quarterly very good, in octogenarian way.”
Lady Rothermere paid TSE £25 for the publication of The Waste Land in the Criterion. TSE to Seldes, 20 Mar 1923: “As a matter of fact, she gave me twenty-five pounds, which was outside of the sum guaranteed for the paper, for publishing my poem and I preferred not to take anything for minor obligations.”
The “List of Material Accepted” by the Dial in October includes The Waste Land, making 13pp., paying $130 (£27), and the payment is mentioned in the list of fees for the November issue (Dial papers, Yale).
The notes to TSE’s recording of the poem from 1946 state: “The Waste Land was first published in The Criterion (London) October 1922”, and this first issue was in circulation by 14 Oct. Gallup (C135) states that the November issue of the Dial was “Published almost simultaneously (i.e., ca. 15 October)”, but this is probably too early since an advertisement placed in the New York Tribune 15 Oct by the publisher Little, Brown includes a diary of press comment which happens to mention the October issue of the Dial under the date 4 Oct. The November issue is unlikely to have appeared just eleven days later. Burton Rascoe, recently appointed literary editor of the New York Tribune, was enthusiastic about TSE (writing about him on 2 July and 10 Sept, and on 19 Nov mentioning that he had defended TSE against criticism from Amy Lowell). If the November issue of the Dial had appeared in mid-October, Rascoe would have been unlikely to wait until Sunday 29 Oct to print two extracts of the poem ([I] 1–7, 19–30) or to print another ([III] 266–91) as late as 12 Nov. The New York Times wrote admiringly of “T. S. Eliot’s long-awaited poem” on the first of these Sundays, 29 Oct, so publication probably occurred within a day or two of this. Jeanne Robert Foster’s diary for 30 Oct records a day with Quinn during which “We read The Dial together with the first published version of The Waste Land by T. S. Elliot.” TSE did not receive copies of the Dial until 12 Nov. A note at the foot of the first page of the Dial reads: “Copyright 1922 by T. S. Eliot. An edition of The Waste Land with annotations by Mr Eliot will presently be issued by Boni & Liveright.—The Editors.”
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
TSE to Seldes, 12 Nov 1922: “I am sending you a few circulars of The Criterion, and I trust you have received the first number which I had sent to you. Now sold out. So far, no steps have been taken toward acquiring American subscribers. This is owing to the appearance of my poem in the first number; I do not want the first number to be put upon the American market as it would have been unfair in view of the almost simultaneous appearance of the poem in The Dial. I am looking forward to receiving the November number; Liveright’s proof was on the whole very good indeed and I have no doubt that the appearance in The Dial will be equally good”, to which is added in manuscript: “Nov. no. just received. Poem admirably printed. I see some remarks by you which I find very flattering—But I find this poem as far behind me as Prufrock now: my present ideas are very different.” (Seldes was to write one of the earliest reviews of the poem, in the Nation 6 Dec.)
A two-and-a-half-page Comment in the December issue of the Dial told readers that “The editors have the pleasure of announcing that for the year 1922 THE DIAL’S award goes to Mr T. S. Eliot.” The piece ended: “Mr Eliot is now editor of The Criterion, a quarterly which we (as it were en passant) hereby make welcome. The most active and, we are told, the most influential editor-critic in London found nothing to say of one of the contributions to the first number except that it was ‘an obscure, but amusing poem’ by the editor. We should hate to feel that our readers can judge of the state of criticism in England by turning to the first page of our November issue and reading the same poem there.”
Thayer to TSE, 5 Oct 1922: “I have been very glad to learn from New York that the suggestion I made to Mr. Watson while he was with me in Berlin last July has borne fruit and that we are despite your asperity to have the pleasure of recognising publicly your contribution to contemporary Letters.” Thayer to Alyse Gregory, 22 Oct: “I feel forced to refrain in future from publishing such matter as the silly cantos of Ezra Pound and as the very disappointing Waste Land and I should like to secure for the Dial the work of such recognised American authors as Edith Wharton” (Joost 111). On 9 Dec Thayer congratulated TSE on the first issue of the Criterion: “I find your contributor Mr. Saintsbury goes on writing like a boy of promise and your contributor Mr. Eliot like a man of genius.” (TSE visited Thayer in a sanatorium in 1932. In 1948 Alyse Gregory invited TSE to write an introduction to Thayer’s poems. After reading them, TSE replied, 24 May 1949, that he was “for several reasons under permanent obligation to Scofield”, but feared that “my commendation would certainly betray my lack of sympathy with this poetry.”)
As publisher of the book, Horace Liveright was pleased with his literary coup, but struggled financially. He wrote to Pound, 5 Feb 1923: “The Waste Land has sold 1000 copies up to date and who knows, it may go up to 2000 or 3000 copies. Just think, Eliot may make almost $500.00 on the book rights of this poem. And Gene Stratton Porter makes $40,000 to $60,000 a year out of her books.” Quinn to TSE, 26 Feb 1923: “I daresay you have received press clippings of all the reviews that have been published here of The Waste Land, good or enthusiastic or hostile, but for the most part praising it. In fact, confidentially, the success of The Waste Land was rather a surprise to Liveright. He almost had cold feet about it before the Dial suggestion was made.” TSE to Quinn, 12 Mar: “I am interested to hear that Liveright has sold 1250 copies of my book already and am glad that it has exceeded his expectations.” Nonetheless, Wyndham Lewis wrote to Pound, 7 May 1925: “Eliot told me last year that Liver. was peculiarly unreliable”. TSE to Charles Stewart at Faber & Gwyer, 29 Aug 1927: “I have no particular affection for Boni and Liberight, having had experience of them as publishers.”
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
In 1928, facing bankruptcy, Liveright brought in new investors, who renamed the firm. TSE’s contract with Boni & Liveright had been for five years from 1922, but in 1928 and 1930 third and fourth printings of the poem were issued without permission by Horace Liveright Inc. In addition, in 1930 Charles Boni published Prize Poems 1913–1929, ed. Charles A. Wagner (introduction by Mark Van Doren), which included The Waste Land without authorisation. TSE to Van Doren, 13 May 1930: “The publishers make acknowledgement to me, but I have no cognisance of them, and have never granted permission to anyone to use The Waste Land or any part of it · · · Liveright could not have given permission, because his period of publication expired in 1927, and he had no anthology rights anyway. Charles Boni appears simply to have lifted my best poem and my best financial asset; though even without a Boni, the money I have had out of The Waste Land is small recompense for the years of sweat, hell and technical study.” To Charles Bloch, 27 Dec 193
4: “Strictly speaking, The Waste Land was not a prize poem, as the Dial award was intended as a recognition of the whole work of the authors chosen, and not for any particular piece.”
Henry Eliot visited Horace Liveright’s offices on TSE’s behalf, after which the firm’s T. R. Smith wrote to TSE, 13 Oct 1931. He apologised for having, without consultation, granted permission to Charles Boni to reprint the poem in the anthology, and for Liveright’s reprints of the poem. An enclosed account shows that 2,458 copies had been sold at $1.50 before 30 June 1930, and that 116 copies were sold in the US in the following six months, and five in Canada. “We have on hand at the present time about 250 copies of the book unbound, and 40 copies bound · · · Of this sheet stock and bound stock on hand we can do either one of two things. We can just go on selling them until the edition has been exhausted, and then end the matter; or we can ‘remainder’ them for whatever price we can get for them without any royalty payment.” Smith added that Liverights would be very happy to publish TSE’s collected poems. The accounts of the Liveright printings, in the archive of W. W. Norton, show that sales continued, in small numbers, until 1938 (Elizabeth Micakovic, personal communication).
4. THE HOGARTH PRESS
In March 1922, TSE offered The Waste Land as a book to the Hogarth Press. Virginia Woolf recorded: “He has written a poem of 40 pages, which we are to print in the autumn. This is his best work, he says. He is pleased with it; takes heart, I think, from the thought of that safe in his desk” (Diary 12 Mar 1922). Virginia Woolf to TSE [14 Apr 1922]: “When are we to see your poem?—and then I can have a fling at you.” After he had read the poem at the Woolfs’ house, she wrote: “He sang it & chanted it rhythmed it” (Diary 23 June). Daniel H. Woodward to TSE, 13 Dec 1962: “Mr. Woolf · · · does not know the source of the text: The Criterion and a manuscript of the notes, the Boni and Liveright edition, which includes the notes (my guess), or some other source. Can you clarify this?” TSE, 26 June 1963: “I am not clear what Mr. Leonard Woolf means in saying that he does not know the source of the text and notes. I presume that I gave him a typescript of the text and notes at the time. If he returned them to me after the book was published, I must have lost or destroyed them.”
The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Page 67