Agricultural History Review, Volume 61 Part 2 (2013), pp. 282–300

This article examines the Criterion to reveal the importance of T. S. Eliot’s preoccupation with agriculture. The Criterion, edited by Eliot from 1922 to 1939, has received a large amount of critical attention, but the agricultural side of the literary review has been almost entirely disregarded. This article begins by analysing the agricultural concerns present within Eliot’s Criterion Commentaries. It then brings to attention the agricultural books that Eliot selected for review in the ‘Books of the Quarter’ section and the key figures of the organic husbandry movement who contributed to the Criterion. It reveals that a number of central organic concerns were discussed within the Criterion, including those of rural decline, the imbalance of town and country, mechanization, artificial fertilizers, humus and soil erosion. It concludes that the Criterion helped forward the organic philosophy throughout the 1930s and that, consequently, Eliot can be considered a supporter of the organic movement. 

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