In the next fifteen years (1930-1945) Eliot's literary concerns were rather equally divided between nondramatic poetry and drama. In 1930 "Ash Wednesday" was published, and, after a visit to America (1932-1933) during which he gave lectures at Harvard and at the University of Virginia and visited relatives in New England, the five poems later entitled "Landscapes" appeared (1934-1935). Inspired by a visit to Burnt Norton manor in Gloucestershire in the summer of 1934, Eliot wrote "Burnt Norton," the first poem of what was to become Four Quartets (1943), late in 1935 and saw its publication in April 1936.
These years were also important to his development as a dramatist. Sweeney Agonistes was performed in May 1933 at Vassar College and again early in 1934 in London in the club room of the Group Theatre. In addition, he collaborated on The Rock, a pageant play performed in the spring of 1934 to raise money for the Forty-Five Churches Fund. Of much greater significance was the appearance in 1935 of Murder in the Cathedral, acclaimed by many as Eliot's greatest success in the theatre. Four years later he produced The Family Reunion but then returned to poetry as the war made it difficult for him to undertake such large projects as full-length plays; he noted in an interview with Donald Hall published in the Paris Review, "In 1939 if there hadn't been a war I would probably have tried to write another play ...." Instead he wrote the three later poems of Four Quartets: "East Coker" (March 1940), "The Dry Salvages" (February 1941), and "Little Gidding" (October 1942).
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