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

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

-winning poet

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...

. She was a major shareholder in the publishing firm of

Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited, commonly known as Faber & Faber or simply 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, C. S. Lewis, Margaret S ...

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 in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...

, she was educated at

Queen Anne's School Queen Anne's School is a private boarding and day school for girls aged 11 to 18, situated in the suburb of Caversham just north of the River Thames and Reading town centre and occupying a campus. There are around 450 pupils. Nearly half are ...

, 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 an admirer of Eliot since, at the age of 14, 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 Britis ...

read '' 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. They moved to No.3 Kensington Court Gardens where she lived until her death. 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 Board game, game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, re ...

and eating cheese, stating "He obviously needed a happy marriage. He wouldn't die until he'd had it." Following T. S. Eliot's death in 1965, 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 rights, film, translation rights, original manuscripts of published work, unpublished or partially ...

, 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 ...

with his edition of ''The Inventions of the March Hare'' (1996), a volume of Eliot's unpublished verse. A long-delayed second volume of 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 poetry, light poems by T. S. Eliot about Cat, feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. It serves as the basis for Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1981 ...

''. 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 theatre, West End and on Broadway theatre, Broad ...

musical ''

Cats The cat (''Felis catus''), also referred to as the domestic cat or house cat, is a small domesticated carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species of the family Felidae. Advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that the ...

''. 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. In 1972 she won the

Rose Mary Crawshay Prize The Rose Mary Crawshay Prize is a literary prize for female scholars, inaugurated in 1888 by the British Academy. Description The prize, set up in 1888, is said by the British Academy to be the only UK literary prize specifically for female sc ...

for ''The Waste Land: Facsimile and Manuscripts of the Original Drafts''. 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''. The letters were shortlisted for the 1988

National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography The National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, established in 1983, is an annual American literary award presented by the National Book Critics Circle The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) is an American nonprofit organization (501 ...

. 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 Within Christianity, a godparent or sponsor is someone who bears witness to a child's baptism (christening) and later is willing to help in their catechesis, as well as their lifelong spiritual formation. In both religious and civil views, ...

to the mathematician

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 popula ...

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 Writers from Leeds British book editors British literary editors People educated at Queen Anne's School

Early life

Personal life

See also

References

External links