Eliot in perspective, divided into the three periods that he himself perceived in his work toward the end of his life. The emphasis is on his earliest ""essays in generalization"" rather than his later, more discursive ""appreciations of individual authors"" and ""social and religious criticism."" All have been previously published, but the ever-discreet editorship of Frank Kermode has now made available the definitive collection, in chronology, of Eliot's enormously influential literary criticism.