T. S. Eliot on Durkheim: A New Attribution

Abstract

In August 1916, T. S. Eliot wrote to Conrad Aiken that he had been writing for the Monist and the International Journal of Ethics, reviews for the New Statesman, the Manchester Guardian, and the Westminster Gazette.'' Donald Gallup's bibliography of Eliot's writings lists contributions to the Monist, the International Journal of Ethics, the New Statesman, and the Manchester Guardian in 1916,2 but has no entries for the Westminster Gazette. Although most of the book reviews in the Westminster Gazette in 1916 and 1917 are unsigned, the recent discovery of several pieces by Eliot in the Monist and a statement in one of Eliot's letters provide evidence for Eliot's authorship of at least one contribution to the Westminster Gazette, a review of imile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.3 Less than a month after he wrote to Aiken, Eliot also informed James Haughton Woods, chairman of the philosophy department at Harvard, that he was reviewing for the Westminster Gazette, and specified that he was writing on all sorts of things from Durkheim and Boutroux down to 'Village Government in India' and even H. de Vere Stacpoole's novels.'4 No reviews of Stacpoole, Boutroux, or books related to Village Government in India appeared in the paper in 1916 or 1917,5 but on August 16, 1916, the Gazette did publish a review of J. W. Swain's translation of The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.6 Although the review is unsigned, internal evidence linking it to the recently discovered contributions to the Monist suggests that Eliot was indeed its author. By examining the archives of the Monist, Elizabeth Eames and Alan Cohn were able to identify Eliot as the contributor whose pieces were signed with the