Notes and comments in blue. This information is presented for educational purposes only. Nothing here should be reproduced or used anywhere else. Much of it can be found in the Norton Critical Edition of The Waste Land and various other sources, I highly recommend purchasing the NCE if you want to understand this poem and its place in literature.
Publishing of The Waste Land "History has cunning passages, contrived corridors, and issues". --T.S. Eliot--
The Players
Boni and Liveright--Book Publishers
The Dial--The Dial Magazine, founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson...a literary magazine. During the 1920’s Scorfield Thayer's Dial featured contemporary literary works including the first publication of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and much of Yeats finest latter verse and a selection of Ezra Pound’s best Cantos. It also featured artwork by Picasso, Klimt, and Schiele who were unheard of in America at that time. Thayer’s major objective was to rouse the American public to develop a taste for modern art. The Dial set about to achieve this by forming a collection of paintings and sculptures by the best contemporary artists of the day, exhibiting their works in the pages of The Dial and featuring articles describing the role of modern art in relationship to the Fine Arts.
The Criterion--Literary publication started and edited by T.S. Eliot in the early 1920s.The Waste Land appeard in the first issue in 1922.
Vanity Fair--Magazine
Horace Liveright-- Co-owner of Boni and Liveright
John Peale Bishop--Resigned as managing editor of Vanity Fair (1922), replaced by his friend Edmund Wilson.
Edmund Wilson--managin editor Vanity Fair
Gilbert Seldes--Managing editor of The Dial.
Scofield Thayer--Co-owner of The Dial and chief editor.
James Sibley Watson Jr.--Co-owner of The Dial with Thayer.
Felix Schnelling--Ezra Pounds professor at Univ. of Penn.
Ezra Pound--Poet, activist. Modernist movement.
T.S. Eliot--Poet.
Eliot finished writing The Waste Land through the end of 1921 and begining of 1922. January 1922. Horace Liveright (Boni and Liveright) offers Eliot publication of The Waste Land before the poem is completed and before it has been given the title 'Waste Land'. Liveright's interest in the poem was not based on any reading of it as he hadn't read it, but rather on his belief that the poem might possibly be representative of the pinnacle in the 'Modernist movement' in poetry.
January 2-January 16, 1922. Eliot arrives in Paris for two weeks from Lausanne where he was recovering from a breakdown for three months, and where Eliot and Ezra Pound had edited the Waste Land manuscript.
Liveright was also in Europe at this time and Boni and Liveright had published a number of Pound's poems such as Instigations in 1919, Poems in 1920, and payment for a translation of 'Physique de le Amour' in the summer of 1921, helping Pound avert financial disaster. Liveright trusted Pound's ability to recognize new talent. He also thought Pound's work might be commercially viable in the future. Ezra Pound wanted to unite all the important 'modernist' poets under one publisher. Pound and Liveright met daily for a week with Pound believing Liveright was 'going towards the light' (of Pound's desire for 'modernism' to become the high mark of modern literature). At this same moment James Joyce was looking for an American publisher of Ulysses.
January 3, 1922. Liveright has dinner with James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound. to discuss his ideas for a publishing program. He agrees to pay Joyce $1000 against royalties for Ulyesses, offers a contract to Pound of $500 a year for two years for any poems translated from French, and offers Eliot $150 advance and 15% royalties for Waste Land.
Liveright's only concern with Waste Land was he thought it too short, (he hadn't read it yet) and he asked Pound to contact Eliot and see if he could 'add anything to it'.
Note-- Ezra Pound had contacted W.B. Yeats to try to get him to leave his current publisher and sign with Boni and Liveright so as to gather all the main poets of modernism under one roof, so as to give the modernist movement a singular voice. Yeats declined. February 18, 1922. T.S. Eliot had been in recent negotiations with The Dial's Scofield Thayer on publishing Waste Land. Ezra Pound wrote to Thayer:
'Eliot's Poem is important , almost enough to make everyone else shut up shop!' Thayer replied to Pound that he couldn't comment on the merit of the poem as Eliot hadn't sent him a manuscript of it. Pound replied:
'His poem is as good in its way as Ulysses in its way, and there is so darn little genius, so darn little work that one can take hold of and say, "This at any rate stands, makes a definite part of literature." ' Pound presented The Waste Land as a verse equal to Ulysses, as a work that epitomized the hegemonic position of modernism in literature, which was Pound's main and overriding goal.
March 8, 1922. Eliot telegraphs Thayer that he cannot accept less than $250 for The Waste Land. (The Dial's standing policy was that all poets would be offered $120 per poem, whether they were unknowns or well known.)
Thayer had offered Eliot $150 having never seen the poem and an amount 25% higher than their normal payment for publishing rights. The average income in the U.S. at that time was $750, when compared to today with an average income of $32,000 that would be the equivalent of roughly $6400.
March 10, 1922. Pound writes to The Dial:
'I wish to Christ he (Eliot) had the December award'. The 'December Award' was The Dial Award for services in the cause of letters (literature). The Dial Award was $2000!
March 16, 1922. Eliot's letter to Thayer:
'...took on good authority you paid $400(aprox) to George Moore for a short story, and I must confess that this influenced me in declining $150 for a poem which has taken me a year to write and is my biggest work...if I am to be offered only $150 it is out of the question.
I have written to Ezra Pound to explain my reasons to dispose of the poem to The Dial at that price and he concurs with me. You have asked me several times to give you the right of first refusal of any new work of mine, and I gave you the first refusal of this poem.' Note--George Moore was owed several hundred dollars from an earlier agreement with The Dial, this the reason for Moore being offered more money. Eilot to Pound:
'I think these people should learn to recognize merit instead of senility, and I think it an outrage that we should be paid less merely because Thayer thinks we will take less and be thankful for it...' Thayer was insulted by Eliot's comments and refused any further contact with him. He instead turned to Pound, who was working for The Dial, to exert pressure on him. Ezra Pound agreed with Eliot in general but wrote to Thayer:
'I shd. prefer one good review to several less good ones. I have, as you know, always wanted to see a concentration of the authors I believe in, in one review. The Dial perhaps looks better to me than it does to Eliot.' Pound knew that Modernism in poetry needed a great financial success, as had been achieved by the other modernist arts such as in painting. This was his guiding light. Late April, 1922. With relations between Eliot and Thayer breaking down, Pound seaches for another publisher for The Waste Land.
May 6, 1922. Pound contacts John Quinn, contributor to Vanity Fair and friend of John Peale Bishop. Pound:
'What wd. Vanity Fair pay Eliot for "Waste Land". Cd. yr. friend there, Bishop, get in touch with T.S.E.' July 19, 1922. James Sibley Watson (co-owner Dial) meets Pound in Paris to buy Waste Land. Pound reports his meeting to his wife:
'...lunch with Watson of Dial, on Wed. [19 July], amiable...wants T's poem for Dial etc..' Watson had bought into the idea that the poem vindicated the project of modern experimentalism 'since 1900'. and he did not want The Dial to suffer 'the defeat' and eagerly wanted The Dial to be seen as THE representative of advanced cultural life. Watson flies to Berlin to meet with Thayer the next day.They discuss The Waste Land and reach a decision. They would offer Eliot the second annual Dial Award in secret as the price of the poem, and officially they would pay him only the $150 that was the original offer. So their offer would be $2000, an unheard of amount!! FOR A POEM NEITHER HAD READ.
July 27, 1922. Watson meets Pound again says he needs the manuscript. Pound contacts Eliot and Eliot replies:
'I will let you have a copy of The Waste Land for confidential use as soon as I can make one...I infer from your remarks that Watson is in Paris. I have no objection to either his or Thayer's seeing the manuscript.' Eliot sends the manuscript to Watson on Aug 13. Watson reads manuscript and reports to Thayer:
'In response to Pound's letter Eliot has assumed a more conciliatory attitude and has sent a copy of Wasteland for our perusal. I am forwarding to you...Anyway I wrote him more plainly about the prize (Dial Award) and await his answer. I found the poem dissapointing on first read but after a third shot I think it up to his usual.' Eliot's 'services to letters' (the justification by The Dial for the Dial Award) and 'the merits' of The Waste Land were issues that had no bearing on publication of the poem in The Dial.
Aug 30, 1922. Eliot in a letter to Pound:
'I received a letter from your friend Watson most amiable in tone...offering $150 for The Waste Land (not "Wasteland" please, but "The Waste Land"), and (in confidence) the award for virtue (Dial Award)...' A deal was struck to allow The Dial to publish the poem in October 1922 and for Boni and Liveright to postpone its November 1, 1922 publishing of the poem in book form. Boni and Liveright agreed as long as The Dial agreed to buy 350 copies of the book form of the poem, adding another $315 to the cost for procurring the poem.
The outcome was a great success.
Feb 5, 1923. Liveright to Pound:
'God bless you and Cantos 9 to 12. If we can get as much publicity from them as The Waste Land has recieved, you will be a millionaire. The Waste Land has sold 1000 copies to date and who knows, it may go up to 2000 or 3000 copies. Just think, Eliot may make almost $500 on the book rights of this poem.' The publication of The Waste Land marked the crucial moment in the transition of modernism from a minority culture to one supported by an important institutional and financial apparatus.
The Dial closed in 1929.
Vanity Fair closed in 1936 (resurrected later).
Ezra Pound http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound
In the end it was only an illusion for the public, that the poem itself was the object of concern. It was not. All the deals had been worked out without the publishers ever having read the poem. The Dial profited from a spectacle it had produced. Marketing!
So the question arises, would this poem have risen to its lofty heights without all these mostly financial machinations? I think we come back to Eliot's opening quote: "History has cunning passages, contrived corridors, and issues". --T.S. Eliot--
James