The Use of Poetry and The Use of Criticism- T.S.ELIOT

These lectures, delivered at Harvard University during the winter of 1932-33, owe much to an audience only too ready to applaud merit and condone defect; but I am aware that such success as they had was largely dramatic, and that they will be still more disappointing to those who heard them then they will be to those who did not. I should much prefer to leave my auditors with whatever impression they then received; but by the terms of the Foundation by Mr.Stillman the lectures must be submitted for publication, and with in a fixed period.Thus I explain my commission of another unnecessary book.
–  T.S.E. London, August 1933.