The Waste Land

With elegance, wit and … warmth, [Hollis] tells the story of The Waste Land's difficult birth … At times the book reads, delightfully, as a group biography of modernism's bright lights.
The Times

[An] impressive examination of artistic creation. Hollis is expert at blending biographical detail with literary criticism … It's a testament to his own talent at dissecting his subject matter and infusing it with imaginative empathy that the reader comes away from his “biography” ready to look at The Waste Land with fresh eyes.
Guardian

[Hollis] creates stunning juxtapositions of context and text. A repossession of The Waste Land is the chief effect of reading his book. But the structure of the book is itself a work of art.
TLS – Helen Vendler

A wide-ranging account . brings to life the exciting, even overheated, creative environment in which the poem came into being . Meticulously grounding his account in time and place and paying close attention to the interplay of poetic intuition and critical mind, Hollis succeeds in gripping our attention.
Literary Review

Hollis brilliantly sifts through the tendrils of TS Eliot's unhappiness and shows how, with help from friends, he broke through his tortured silence to create an era-defining poem . . . Such is the energy and engagement of Hollis in this task that you find yourself rooting for the emergence of the poem along with Eliot and his supporters, willing it into life as the book progresses.
Observer

Like the 434-line poem, this book immerses the reader in the political, social and cultural themes of the day . [Hollis] weaves a rich body of research into a fast-paced narrative.
New Statesman

Hollis combines a poet's sharp eye for details with a cultural historian's grasp of atmosphere .The richness of [his] analysis is evident on every page.
Financial Times

'Examines, with amazing forensic diligence, the context and fraught composition of the most famous poem of the 20th century. The clarifying light in each case is exemplary. The celebrated “difficulty” of both men and their work was revealed as perhaps not so difficult at all.'
New Statesman, chosen as a Book of the Year – William Boyd

In the 100 years since TS Eliot penned his famous poem, it has taken on a life of its own. So it's fitting, perhaps, that Matthew Hollis treats Eliot's work to its own biography. This richly analytical book locates the poem's genesis in the aftermath of the first world war and the “nightmare agony” of Eliot's disastrous marriage.
Financial Times, Books of the Year

It is fascinating to read how Eliot created the great modernist poem … and how much the work owes not just to Eliot's personal unhappiness, but to Pound's red pen.
Sunday Times, Books of the Year