Maria Cramer, "The Love Song of T.S. Eliot,"
New York Times, January 6, 2020, p. C3.
As planned, his estate released the statement on Thursday, coinciding with Princeton University Library's announcement the more than 1,100 letters the poet had written to Hale were finally available for public viewing.
Hale gave the letters to Princeton in 1956 with the instructions that they be opened 50 years after both she and Eliot had died. ([Emily] Hale died in 1969, four years after Eliot).
The relationship between the two has long been a source of speculation among literary scholars, who have known for decades of the letters' existence. the letters were freed in October from wooden boxes bound with copper straps and ties before a small group of Princeton professors at the university's Firestone Library.
...
The letters in the collection, which also includes photographs, ephemera and a brief narrative in which Hale describes her relationship with Eliot, are available for viewing only at the Firestone Library and will not be published online until at least 2035 when they are no longer under copyright.
COMMENT
These days it's astonishing to think of someone writing 1,100 letters on paper and mailing them to someone. Hale knew the letters had value since Eliot was famous in his own time. Scholars have been waiting for 50 years to open those boxes and start the search for hidden treasure.
The library made a small ceremony of the opening, and also made the New York Times. Having famous, mysterious materials is good publicity for a library. Nonetheless, copyright prevents digitization. If you want to read them, you'll have to go to Princeton.
