Description
Eliot, T.S.. Dante. London: Faber and Faber, 1929. First Edition. Printed Paper Covered Boards. Very Good. 69pp. Inscribed by Eliot on the ffep “For the Most Reverend William Temple Archbishop of York with the author’s respects, T.S. Eliot 3.x.29” Temple, as had his father before him, became Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a prolific author, & as recognized by all political parties, an outstandingly able cleric whose early advocacy of ecumenicism & concern for social welfare marked out his career from its outset. Eliot reviewed Temple’s Mens Creatrix in 1917 & contributed a paper to the proceedings of the1941 Malvern Conference convened by Temple to consider the ‘ordering of a new society’ after the war. Temple who was for a time a member of the Labour party believed that “The Church should be ‘disinterested’ in the state not uninterested, so as to be able to criticize as appropriate.” The early date of the inscription indicates Eliot’s intention to get it to Temple upon publication & the work itself’s acknowledgment of Dante’s importance as an influence upon his own gives this presentation volume an especially apt unity of its author, presentee & subject. Offsetting at endpapers & spine a little darkened & rubbed at extremities.
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