David Jones (artist-poet) he invented later in life, which he termed "painted inscriptions", and these exert a continuing influence on calligraphers. Although he had been trying to write about his wartime experiences since 1928, it was not until 1937 that Jones published his first literary treatment of the conflict. "In Parenthesis", which was published by Faber and Faber with an introduction (in 1961) by T. S. Eliot, is a mixture of verse and prose-lines but the rich language establishes it as poetry, which is how Jones himself considered it. Jones's literary debut won praise from critics and from fellow-poets such as Eliot and
T. S. Eliot Eliot, his friend Robert Sencourt comments that the young Eliot "would often curl up in the window-seat behind an enormous book, setting the drug of dreams against the pain of living." Secondly, Eliot credited his hometown with fuelling his literary vision: "It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London."