Eliot Among the Ruins

The Waste Land first appeared in the United States in The Dial in 1922, along with the announcement that Eliot had won the magazine’s prestigious and lucrative annual award. Soon after that Boni & Liveright published the poem in book form, filled-out by Eliot’s intimidatingly learned endnotes. The poem prompted plenty of debate. Was The Waste Land revolutionary or an elaborate hoax? Was it radically subjective or simply realistic, a chaotic but recognizable image of the modern world?