This book demonstrates the effect of politics on the work of T.S. Eliot, with particular emphasis on the influences of French reactionary thinking. Kenneth Asher argues that this political inheritance provided the intellectual framework Eliot employed throughout his career. The focus of this political dimension separates the book from previous studies of Eliot. The result is a reestimation of Eliot's view of literary history and literary theory, and new appraisals of several major poems and plays.