T. S. Eliot is regarded as the most important poet-critic of modern times, the twentieth century's 'Man of Letters' whose reputation was forged not only on the strength of his verse, but on the enduring influence of his critical writings.

The Collected Prose presents those works that Eliot allowed to reach print in the order of their final revision or printing. Publishing across four volumes, the series aims to provide an authoritative and clean-text record of Eliot's approved texts and their revisions, beginning with his formative observations, written while he was at high school, and concluding in his final major opus, To Criticize the Critic, published in the months after his death.

This second volume spans 1929-1934, a period in which Eliot's poetry was maturing into the reflective verse of Animula, Ash-Wednesday and Marina. It was also a moment that confirmed his critical reputation with the publication of Selected Essays (1932), reprinting and revising his most important essays on Tradition and the Individual Talent, Hamlet, Marvell and Dante, and culminating in the Harvard lectures that became The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933).