Published in August 1927, "Journey of the Magi" was the eighth in the series and was accompanied by illustrations drawn by American-born avant garde artist Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890–1954).

[2] In the previous year, Eliot had converted to Anglo-Catholicism and his poetry, starting with the Ariel Poems (1927–1931) and Ash Wednesday (1930), took on a decidedly religious character.

The poem's dramatic monologue incorporates quotations and literary allusions to works by earlier writers Lancelot Andrewes and Matthew Arnold.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women, And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly And the villages dirty and charging high prices: A hard time we had of it.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky, And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins, But there was no information, and so we continued And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

In 1925, Eliot became a poetry editor at the London publishing firm of Faber and Gwyer, Ltd.,[4]: pp.50–51  after a career in banking, and subsequent to the success of his earlier poems, including "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), "Gerontion" (1920) and "The Waste Land" (1922).

He was baptised into the Anglican faith on 29 June, 1927 at Finstock, in Oxfordshire, and was confirmed the following day in the private chapel of Thomas Banks Strong, Bishop of Oxford.

[4]: pp.18 [6]: pp.20, 212, 223  Eliot converted in private, but subsequently declared in his 1927 preface to a collection of essays titled For Lancelot Andrewes that he considered himself a classicist in literature, a royalist in politics, and an Anglo-Catholic in religion.

[6]: p.223 [7][8] When his conversion became known, it was "an understandable choice to those around him" given his intellectual convictions, and that "he could not have done anything less than seek what he regarded as the most ancient, most sacramental, and highest expression of the Christian faith that forms the indisputable basis for the culture and civilization of modern Europe".

Four of Eliot's five Ariel poems, including "Journey of the Magi", were accompanied by illustrations by American-born avant garde artist, E. McKnight Kauffer.

[1][3][13][14] Faber & Gwyer, Ltd., printed the "Journey of the Magi" in a 7¼" × 4 ¾", Octavo (8vo) pamphlet "line block in black with brown and grey; casing, thin card covered with yellow laid paper.

"[17] A yellow cover was used for Eliot's poem after Curwen's designer Paul Nash objected for its use in the seventh Ariel pamphlet, Siegfried Sassoon's "Nativity".