December 2025

G. Kim Blank, English Department, University of Victoria

Special Collections in the University of Victoria MacPherson Library has two signed, hand-numbered copies of T. S. Eliot’s Christmas-card poem, Animula: numbers 152 and 365. The cards were published by Faber & Faber Limited (London) 29 October 1929, in a run of 400 copies, and designated on the signature page as a “large-paper edition.” At sixteen unnumbered pages (including blanks), and with thin (papered) hardcovers, in format and size they resemble a booklet.

Eliot’s Animula is number 23 in a series of (at least initially) successfully marketed Faber & Faber Christmas-card poems—“The Ariel Poems”—which, from 1927-1931, and then briefly in 1954, included original poems by other significant poets. The 1927-1931 Ariel series is made up of 38 poems/cards; the 1954 "New Series" adds eight new cards with poems, and keeps up the tradition of having two illustrations with each card.

Each card in the Ariel series also had commissioned illustrations by both young and established artists. The Animula cards have two wood engravings—one black and white, the other in three-colour—by Gertrude Hermes (1901-1983). The coloured illustration is of a naked, classically-styled male figure, juggling, with a background shadow image of the figure; the black and white title-page illustration is a modernistically-styled sun over a slightly curved oceanscape.

A few weeks before the large-paper edition of Animula is published, Faber & Faber issue a smaller-sized Animula card—a commercial trade edition, unnumbered and unsigned (yellow wrapper covers with flaps plus two leaves of four unnumbered pages). Three thousand copies were printed. The front wrapper cover uses the Hermes black and white oceanscape illustration; the first page uses the three-colour illustration. An accompanying green envelope indicates that the Animula trade card was “One Shilling net.” The front of the envelope fully describes the card: “ANIMULA / by T. S. Eliot / The original first printing of the poem, decorated with wood-engravings / by GERTRUDE HERMES / The Aerial Poems No. 23.” Special Collections at UVic also has a copy of this trade version with the original envelope.

These idea for these illustrated festive cards originate with Faber’s production editor, Richard de la Mare (son of the poet, Walter de la Mare [1873-1956]), and were intended as gifts for clients and valued associates of the publisher. Richard de la Mare was keen to use striking art; and although the Ariel-series poets generally had no input over illustration choices, Eliot was not, according to de la Mare, initially fully pleased with Hermes’ nude male figure according to Faber’s archive; a second figure was created, but Eliot then committed to the original (Eliot also records this in a letter to Emily Hale, 24 November 1931).

Animula is the third of Eliot’s card poems for the Ariel series, the first two being Journey of the Magi (no. 8, 1927) and A Song for Simeon (no. 16, 1928). Eliot will write three more: Marina (no. 29, 1930), Triumphal March (no. 35, 1931), and The Cultivation of Christmas Trees (1954). Eliot, then, wrote one Ariel-series poem in each production year.

The Ariel cards were finely printed in England by the Curwen Press, founded by the Reverend John Curwen in 1863; the press closed in 1984. The connected name continues today in the Curwen Studio and the Curwen Print Study Centre.

Special Collections at the University of Victoria acquired signed copy number 152 of Animula in 1967. Number 365 was acquired in 1974, as was the smaller trade-version of the card. The provenance of these cards is unknown, but were likely part of larger acquisitions.

Physical Description

The Animula booklet-poem card (the large-paper edition): printed on hand-made (laid) paper at The Curwen Press, Plaistow; yellow card/board (papered) covers (casebound); upper cover gold blocked; 8 leaves/16 pages (first leaf blank; last page blank); stitched binding; the illustrations are produced using the pochoir (stencil) process; guilt lettered; Walbaum handset typeface (12 point for the poem); no pagination; originally top-edge trimmed; the front covers of the two UVic copies (but, it seems, no other copies) has the initials “M. B. M.” on the bottom right-hand corner. The original copies likely came in a plain glassine dustwrapper.

The signed large-format card of Animula: 5.625 x 8.75 inches (Demy octavo [8vo] sizing)

The trade-card of Animula: 4.75 x 7.25 inches

The trade-card envelope of Animula: 5 x 7.5 inches (Crown octavo)

Other Information

~ Numbers 1-17 of the Ariel Poems (up until 1929) are published by Faber & Gwyer (established 1925); Geoffrey Faber (1889-1961) takes over as chairman of the publishing house in 1929 (there is no other “Faber”).

~ The 1954 "New Series" of Ariel Poems are no longer printed by the Curwen Press. They are now printed by Jesse Broad & Company, Manchester. While the 1927-1931 trade version of the Ariel Poems sells for 1 shilling, the 1954 series sells for 2 shillings.

~ The first of the Ariel Poems to be published under the Faber & Faber imprint (rather than Faber & Gwyer) is W. B. Yeats’ Three Things (no. 18, 1929).

~ The large-format Animula is designated as Gallup A14b in Eliot’s complete poems; the trade version card is Gallup A14a.

~ The word “Ariel,” used to name the full series of Christmas-card poems, and then taken by Eliot to name this grouping when placed in collected editions of his poems, has a wide-range of cultural associations: the idea of a sylph, spirit, or sprite; a minor arch-angel (in John Milton’s Paradise Lost); daughter of the ocean (of Triton), or sea-nymph, Nereid; the mischievous character (Ariel) in Shakespeare’s The Tempest; in Hebrew, meaning “Lion of God,” suggesting Jerusalem; in the Bible at Isaiah 29:1-12, symbolically meaning Jerusalem, with the warning that Jerusalem, as a place a idolatry, will be destroyed and become as a burning altar hearth (an “ariel”).

University of Victoria Catalogue Description

[UVic call number PR6009 L7A72 1929, c.1, c.2]:

Title Animula

By T.S. Eliot ; wood engravings by Gertrude Hermes.

Creator Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965, author, autographer.

Hermes, Gertrude, illustrator.

Subject Eliot, T. S (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965

English poetry -- 20th century

Series Ariel poems ; no. 23.

The Ariel poems ; no. 23

Publisher London : Faber & Faber Ltd

Creation Date 1929

Format 13 unnumbered pages : 2 illustrations (1 color) ; 23 cm.

Source Library Catalog

Notes "This large-paper edition, printed on English hand-made paper, is limited to four hundred copies. This is Number ..."--Page 1.

University of Victoria Special Collections copy 1 of Animula is Number 152, and has autograph: T.S. Eliot.

University of Victoria Special Collections copy 2 of Animula is Number 365, and has autograph: T.S. Eliot.

My thanks to John Frederick of UVic Special Collections for making useful images of the Animula cards and for solving some cataloguing issues. Thanks, too, to Matthew Huculak (Director, KULA Library Futures Academy, UVic) for his project enthusiasm, and for providing digital space for the project.