Mr. Possum's preoccupations …

… The Letters of TS Eliot Volume 8: 1936-1938, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden – review | Books | The Guardian, (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Eliot had built a life as a one-man publishing industry. In these three years he both laid the ground for the Four Quartets with visits to Little Gidding and East Coker and further indulged the playfulness of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. He was a full-time director at Faber & Faber, still editor of the Criterionquarterly (jobs that earned him £500 a year) and now a celebrated playwright; Murder in the Cathedral had opened in 1935, and was bringing him a steady £5 a week in royalties. He was too, as these pages attest, emphatically and literally, a man of letters.