T.S Eliot letters and poems sold for $438,000

LONDON - A series of largely unpublished letters from T.S. Eliot and a first edition of The Waste Land poem inscribed by the author sold for nearly $438,000 at auction on Tuesday.

The lots included sets of letters from Eliot to his godson Tom Faber and Tom's mother Enid. Tom Faber, who died in 2004, was Eliot's first godchild and the son of his friend and publisher Geoffrey Faber.

A series of 50 typed letters sent to Tom were signed "Uncle Tom" and revealed a humorous side to the poet.

In one letter he wrote "I should like to put you in touch with Mr Mandlebaum of New York, who is writing a thesis on the Dynamics of Audience-Response to the Cocktail Party. This is called Sociology and is an American disease."

The sale included a first edition of Eliot's classic poem The Waste Land, inscribed by the poet, sold for 32,400 pounds. With the letters and other inscribed first editions the collections totaled 242,652 pounds.

American-born Thomas Stearns Eliot spent much of his life in Britain as a poet, playwright and publisher with an austere reputation, based on his royalist, conservative, High Anglican church views.

Born in St Louis, Missouri, in 1888, Eliot moved to London in 1914, where he worked as a teacher and a bank clerk. He died in 1965.

Apart from his modernist poems, he published "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats," a children's work on which Andrew Lloyd Webber's hit musical "Cats" is based.

- REUTERS