A typed letter written by the poet T. S. Eliot has been discovered in the Jacob Isaacs Collection.
The collection primarily consists of Professor Isaacs’ research notes, and this document was unexpectedly unearthed during an on-going project to catalogue the collection, creating a great deal of excitement among the archive staff. The letter was written to Isaacs in 1957, the letterhead indicating that Eliot wrote it at the publishing company Faber and Faber Limited where he was employed as editor.
In the letter Eliot asks Isaacs for help in recalling what he meant in one of his old essays, ‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’ as the essay was just about to be published by Professor Sehrt of Göttingen. Professor Sehrt wanted to know the identity of Webster, who was referenced in the essay, but Eliot was unable to remember himself. He concludes his letter on a rather pessimistic note by saying ‘Incidentally, I do not even remember whether I meant Sam Johnson or Ben Jonson. It is Jonson in my text, but is this a misprint? No-one will ever know.’
TS Eliot was a friend of Jacob Isaacs, a writer and university lecturer. Isaacs was chair of English language and literature at Queen Mary College from 1952-1964 and was the author of more than thirty books and articles. His interests ranged from Shakespeare and his contemporaries, with particular emphasis on Elizabethan and Restoration theatrical history, to Sir George Etherege, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and twentieth century poetry.
The Jacob Isaacs Collection is currently being catalogued and the finished catalogue will be available around May 2013. More information on the Archives is available on the website.