Books: Cat Book

OLD POSSUM'S BOOK OF PRACTICAL CATS—T. S. Eliot—Harcourt, Brace ($1.25).

"Old Possum" is a nickname given to Anglophile T. S. Eliot† by Anglophobe Ezra Pound. Source of the nickname was an old compact by which Poet Pound undertook to attack British literary lethargy from afar (i.e., Rapallo, Italy), while Poet Eliot played possum in the enemy camp. Lying low in a high place, Eliot never included in his published works various light verses about cats which his friends and a few children received from time to time, typewritten and unsigned. The present...

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