‡Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

‡Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

Christmas card with a portrait of T. S. Eliot dressed as a priest

Inscribed WISHING YOU/A PRIM XMAS/AND/A PRIGGISH NEW YEAR./FROM. PASTOR. T.STEARNS ELIOT/MODERNIST TABERNACLE./BOSTON./MASS: and with T. S. Eliot's signature stuck down (to outer leaf)

Pencil, watercolour, pen and ink, and collage on folded card

18.3 x 32.4cm (unfolded)

Unframed

Provenance:

Siegfried Sassoon;

And by family descent

In later life, it seems that Siegfried Sassoon felt embittered towards the new generation of modernist poets, such as Ezra Pound (1885-1972) and T. S. Eliot (1888-1965). In one letter he wrote, 'I now live almost entirely detached from the literary scene and the younger generation and am liable to assume that none of them regard me as having any significance in the Eliot/Auden age'.