Eliot's work fundamentally changed literary thinking and Selected Essays provides both an overview and an in-depth examination of his theory.
[3] A Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry was originally an addendum to Eliot's preface to Dryden's Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1928 reprint).
[4] Further essays include The Metaphysical Poets (1921) in which Eliot argued that a "dissociation of sensibility" set in... due to the influence of ... Milton and Dryden.
[5] Eliot converted to the Church of England and some of the essays expressed the form and discipline he felt necessary for fulfilment in his own life.
Selected Essays was placed fourth in the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's Fifty Best Books of the Century and sixth in Modern Library's Best 20th-Century Nonfiction.