Esmé Valerie Eliot (née Fletcher; 17 August 19269 November 2012) was the second wife and later widow of the

Nobel prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfre ...

-winning poet

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biog ...

. She was a major stockholder in the publishing firm of

Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel ...

Limited and the editor and annotator of a number of books dealing with her late husband's writings.

Early life

The daughter of an insurance manager in

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popula ...

, she was educated at Queen Anne's School, Caversham, where she was reputed to have told her headteacher that she knew precisely what she wanted to become: secretary to T.S. Eliot.

Personal life

Valerie married Eliot, almost 40 years her senior, on 10 January 1957. She had been a star-struck fan of Eliot since her schooldays (at the age of 14, on hearing

John Gielgud Sir Arthur John Gielgud, (; 14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000) was an English actor and theatre director whose career spanned eight decades. With Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, he was one of the trinity of actors who dominated the Briti ...

read '' The Journey of the Magi''), as she confided to the novelist Charles Morgan, for whom she worked as a secretary. Morgan used his influence to get her a job at Faber and Faber, where she finally met Eliot in August 1949, a debt of kindness which she always acknowledged. In a 1994 interview with ''The Independent'', she recalled a very ordinary life of evenings spent at home playing

Scrabble ''Scrabble'' is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left ...

and eating cheese, stating "He obviously needed a happy marriage. He wouldn't die until he'd had it." Following T.S. Eliot's 1965 death, Valerie was his most important editor and

literary executor The literary estate of a deceased author consists mainly of the copyright and other intellectual property rights of published works, including film, translation rights, original manuscripts of published work, unpublished or partially completed wo ...

, having brought to press ''The Waste Land: Facsimile and Manuscripts of the Original Drafts'' (1971) and '' The Letters of T.S. Eliot: Volume 1, 1898–1922'' (1989). She assisted

Christopher Ricks Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks (born 18 September 1933) is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University (US), co-director of the Editorial Institute at Boston Uni ...

with his edition of ''The Inventions of the March Hare'' (1996), a volume of Eliot's unpublished verse. A long-delayed second volume of T.S. Eliot's letters was also edited by her. One of Valerie Eliot's most lucrative decisions as executor was granting permission for a stage musical to be based on her husband's work ''

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats ''Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'' (1939) is a collection of whimsical light poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. It serves as the basis for Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1981 musical ''Cats''. ...

''. This became the hit

Andrew Lloyd Webber Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber (born 22 March 1948), is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 21 musicals, ...

musical ''

Cats The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of ...

''. With her portion of the proceeds Valerie Eliot established "Old Possum's Practical Trust" – a literary

registered charity A charitable organization or charity is an organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being (e.g. educational, Religion, religious or other activities serving the public interest or common good). The legal definitio ...

– and funded the T.S. Eliot Prize, given annually and worth £15,000. At the 1983 Tony Awards, Valerie Eliot accepted her husband's posthumous

Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical The Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical is awarded to librettists of the spoken, non-sung dialogue, and storyline of a musical play. Eligibility is restricted to works with original narrative framework; plotless revues and revivals are ineligib ...

for ''Cats''. In late 2009, the second volume of Eliot's letters was published. The third volume, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, followed in July 2012. Valerie Eliot died on 9 November 2012 at her home in London. She was 86 years old. She was a

godparent In infant baptism and denominations of Christianity, a godparent (also known as a sponsor, or '' gossiprede'') is someone who bears witness to a child's christening and later is willing to help in their catechesis, as well as their lifelo ...

Marcus du Sautoy Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy (; born 26 August 1965) is a British mathematician, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Fellow of New College, Oxford and author of popular mathematics and pop ...

References

External links

Old Possum's Practical Trust
*McCrum, Robert
"TS Eliot – the secret passion"
''The Observer''.

''The Independent''. *Narita, Tatsushi
"My Visit with Mrs. T.S. Eliot (Valerie Eliot) at the Kensington Home"

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eliot, Valerie 1926 births 2012 deaths T. S. Eliot Fellows of Newnham College, Cambridge People from Leeds British book editors British literary editors People educated at Queen Anne's School