ABSTRACT
In late 1942, as he was writing the essays that would become the fi rst chapter of Notes Towards the Defi nition of Culture, T.S. Eliot could scarcely have wished for a more secure position in the world of letters. The American who had arrived in London with no work and few connections three decades earlier was now a power broker in English poetry, having helped launch the Auden circle as a director at Faber and Faber. He had recently seen such high demand for “East Coker” that the New English Weekly issued a special reprint. The full version of Four Quartets would soon debut in combined American and English press runs of 12,000-24 times that of Prufrock and Other Observations, marking his arrival at “something resembling a mass audience for poetry” (Sharpe 159). Notes Towards the Defi nition of Culture is a confi dent selfassertion in the Arnoldian role of cultural sage.1 Three years after its appearance, Eliot’s visage would adorn the cover of the Atlantic Monthly, perched above a classical odeon as storm clouds gathered behind him, looking, as David Chinitz aptly describes it, as if he were standing at the center of his own “personal shrine” (“Divide” 237).
