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 first volume covers the years 1905-1928, a time of dramatic development for Eliot as both a poet and critic that saw the publication of Prufrock and Other Observations, The Waste Land and Journey of the Magi, and a gathering his seminal early essays under the title The Sacred Wood (1920). In his penetrating surveys of poetic form and the literary milieu of the day, he assesses the era's ageing giants, Yeats, Swinburne, Henry James, and hails the arrival of its new generation, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis. The volume also traces Eliot's deepening search for a meaningful response to the trauma of the Great War, and an exploration of religion that led to his confirmation in the Church of England in 1927.