The Waste Land (Annotated‪)‬

"The Waste Land", by T.S. Eliot, is conclusively regarded as "one of the most important poems of the 20th century" and a central text in Modernist poetry.   Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of The Criterion and in the United States in the November issue of The Dial. It was published in book form in December 1922. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", and the mantra in the Sanskrit language "Shantih shantih shantih".

Eliot's poetry loosely follows the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King combined with vignettes of contemporary British society. Eliot employs many literary and cultural allusions from the Western canon, Buddhism and the Hindu Upanishads. Because of this, critics and scholars regard the poem as obscure.  The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy featuring abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time and conjuring of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures.


This edition has been formatted for your reader, with an active table of contents.  It has also been annotated, with additional information about the poetry and also T.S. Eliot, including an overview, composition, publication history, structure, style, sources, biographical and bibliographical information.