Mary and Mr Eliot: A Sort of Love Story

A rediscovered story of unrequited love which reveals an intimate new portrait of the poet T. S. Eliot – and of its author, a formidable woman sidelined by literary history.

‘Heartbreaking and wonderfully told.’ Susan Hill, Spectator Books of the Year

‘Compelling ... compulsive.’ Margaret Drabble, New Statesman

In 1938 T.S. Eliot struck up a friendship with Mary Trevelyan, a passionately curious woman and intrepid traveller. Their relationship was cosy and domestic — characterised by churchgoing, record-playing, day trips with Mary at the wheel or Eliot in his rolled shirt-sleeves cooking up sausages for dinner. Over the years, Mary came to believe that their friendship might lead to something more . . . but their journey together did not end as she would have hoped.

Trevelyan left a unique document — of diaries, letters and pictures — charting their twenty-year-long relationship in her vivid prose. Erica Wagner has brought this untold story together for the first time. Mary and Mr Eliot is a revelatory tale of joy, misunderstanding and betrayal that feels utterly modern and deeply human.