On Jan. 2, 2020, a collection of 1,131 letters from Nobel laureate and renowned writer Thomas Stearns (T.S.) Eliot to his lifelong friend Emily Hale were unsealed at Princeton University Library. A Boston native, Hale was a speech and drama teacher whose career included positions at Simmons College and Smith College. She and Eliot initially met in 1912 in Cambridge, Massachusetts when Eliot attended Harvard. They rekindled their friendship in 1927 and corresponded frequently over the next two decades. 

Join us to hear a panel of scholars and experts discuss what has been revealed from one of the best-known sealed literary archives in the world.

Panelists

Frances Dickey, Associate Professor of English, University of Missouri, and author of "May the Record Speak: The Correspondence of T. S. Eliot"

Sara Fitzgerald, Author of "The Poet’s Girl: A novel of T.S. Eliot and Emily Hale"

J. Elyse Graham ’07, Associate Professor of English, Stony Brook University, and author of Princeton Alumni Weekly article, "Letters to Emily"

Michelle Taylor, Ph.D. Candidate in English, Harvard University, and author of The New Yorker article, "The Secret History of T. S. Eliot’s Muse"

John Whittier-Ferguson, Professor of English, University of Michigan, and Vice President of The International T. S. Eliot Society 

Moderator

Daniel Linke, University Archivist and Deputy Head of Special Collections, Princeton University Library

View the recording here