The Criterion The Criterion The Criterion was a British literary magazine published from October 1922 to January 1939. "The Criterion" (or the "Criterion") was, for most of its run, a quarterly journal, although for a period in 1927–28 it was published monthly. It was created by the poet, dramatist, and literary critic T. S. Eliot who served as its editor for its entire run. Eliot's goal was to make it a literary review dedicated to the maintenance of standards and the reunification of a European intellectual community. Although in a letter to a friend in 1935 George Orwell had said "for pure
T. S. Eliot has had a blue plaque on it since 1986. For a poet of his stature, Eliot produced a relatively small number of poems. He was aware of this even early in his career. He wrote to J.H. Woods, one of his former Harvard professors, "My reputation in London is built upon one small volume of verse, and is kept up by printing two or three more poems in a year. The only thing that matters is that these should be perfect in their kind, so that each should be an event." Typically, Eliot first published his poems individually in periodicals