As a dramatist also, Eliot is an important figure in the twentieth century. He was inclined from the first toward the theater--his early poems are essentially dramatic; many of his early essays and reviews are on drama or dramatists. By the mid 1920s, he was writing a drama, Sweeney Agonistes: in the 1930s he wrote The Rock (1934), Murder in the Cathedral (1935), and The Family Reunion (1939); in the 1940s and 1950s, he devoted himself almost exclusively to plays, of which The Cocktail Party (1950) has been the most popular. His goal, realized only in part, was the revitalization of poetic drama in terms which would be consistent with the modern age. He experimented endlessly with language which, though close to contemporary speech, is essentially poetic and thus capable of extraordinary spiritual, emotional, and intellectual resonance. He did more, perhaps, than any other person to reestablish poetic drama and to create an audience for it. His work has influenced a number of important twentieth-century dramatists, including W. H. Auden and Harold Pinter.
Eliot also made significant contributions as an editor and publisher. From 1922 to 1939, he was the editor of a major intellectual journal, the Criterion, and from 1925 to 1965, an editor/director in the publishing house of Faber and Faber.
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