Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats: with illustrations by Rebecca Ashdown: 1 (Faber Children's Classics)

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But even if that's me, I'm glad I finally got around to reading about Rum Tum Tugger, Old Deuteronomy, and Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat. The only down-side for me is that the illustrations of the cats lack their individual characteristics as described in the poems. The acclaimed poet of The Waste Land, Four Quartets, and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, among numerous other poems, prose, and works of drama, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. On 5 June 2009, The Times revealed that in 1937 Eliot had composed a 34-line poem entitled "Cows" for the children of Frank Morley, a friend who, like Eliot, was a director of the publishing company Faber and Faber.

The full book consists of 15 very short poems, most of which describe a distinct personality of cat. He was also a very successful set and costume designer, earning a Tony Award for his Broadway production of Edward Gorey's Dracula. In 1954, English composer Alan Rawsthorne set six of the poems in a work for speaker and orchestra entitled Practical Cats, which was recorded soon afterwards, with the actor Robert Donat as the speaker.Ricks and McCue identify "fambly" as a variant spelling and Eliot frequently used it in his letters to the Tandy family. I know I have read this more times than I have dates for, so this mayn't be surprising, but I wanted there to be more variety.

Admittedly the hyper-sexualisation of Eliot’s text is eyebrow-raising, and means this is certainly no Pixar movie. S. Eliot published Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats through the publishing house Faber and Faber, where he served as an editor. Edward Gorey (1925-2000) wrote and illustrated such popular books as The Doubtful Guest, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, and The Headless Bust.Throughout the 1930s, the family would be the first audience on which Eliot tested out the cat poems, both in letters and on visits to the family's Hampshire cottage.