“James E. Miller, Jr. has accomplished the seemingly impossible—given a radically new reading of The Waste Land. The hitherto well-kept secret of Eliot's friendship with Jean Verdenal, the effect of this friendship and of Verdenal's death [at Gallipoli] upon Eliot's attitude to women, its almost disastrous effect on his creativity, the references to Verdenal in The Waste Land and Four Quartets, are here explored for the first time. We may take exception to some of Miller's interpretations, but his facts are incontrovertible. There can be no doubt that The Waste Land is, above all, a personal utterance, as Eliot said it was and Miller shows. Any serious study of this most famous poem, from this time on, will have to take into account T. S. Eliot's Personal Waste Land." —Louis Simpson

"Any book that honestly attempts to reveal a coherence in Eliot's Waste Land is to be applauded. Basing his findings on the original text, Mr. Miller presents a firm thesis, which will be widely discussed. Whatever be the exact truth, Eliot comes out of it well. In place of a bland know-all throwing off enigmas to baffle ardent disciples, we are invited to watch a tormented soul striving through great poetry towards spiritual self-mastery." —G. Wilson Knight

“[T]he best study thus far of the new Waste Land revealed in 1971 when the facsimile edition of the original manuscripts appeared.” —Journal of Modern Literature

“James E. Miller Jr. has written a stimulating and important book. Not only does it succeed in yielding a significantly new interpretation of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land;
it also demonstrates the manner in which biographical material can be tactfully used to enrich literary criticism. Miller effectively demolishes the last vestiges of the determined efforts of the New Critics to separate a poet from his poem.” —Robert D. Spector, World Literature Today