Posted on January 2, 2020 at 10:00 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
Fans of classic literature have another reason to celebrate the new year.
When 2019 ended, so too did the embargo on letters that poet T.S. Eliot sent to his confidante and muse, Emily Hale.
The Guardian reports that Hale donated more than 1,000 letters that she’d received to Princeton University’s library, with the caveat that they remain private for fifty years after Eliot’s or Hale’s death — whichever came later.
Hale outlived Eliot, dying in 1969, and according to biographers, Eliot instructed his survivors to burn all of Hale’s letters to him.
Library officials and scholars are, to put it lightly, expecting their excitement over the unsealing to be shared — and a mad dash to view them.
“It will be the special collections equivalent of a stampede at a rock concert,” Daniel Linke, the interim head of special collections at the library, told the Associated Press.
Read more about Hale's relationship with Eliot in the Guardian.
Related posts
Categories: Today in Books