“Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919) is an essay in poetics by the American-born poet-critic T. S. Eliot, and is widely regarded as his most important statement of literary principle. First published in two instalments (September and December 1919) in the London literary-philosophical magazine
The Egoist, of which Eliot was assistant editor, it reappeared as a single thirteen-page essay in Eliot’s first prose book,
The Sacred Wood(November 1920), providing the intellectual centrepiece of that collection. Its subsequent impact and reputation have been remarkable: it became the most discussed, quoted and reprinted literary essay in English of the twentieth century, an almost obligatory item in anthologies of modern critical writing.
The subject of Eliot’s essay is, in its
2030 words
Citation: Baldick, Chris. "Tradition and the Individual Talent". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 February 2021 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=39124, accessed 23 November 2024.]
