The Criterion has long been recognized as integral to a full understanding of T. S. Eliot's literary practice and multiple critical accounts of the review have illustrated that his editorship provided Eliot with a means to discuss, debate, and dispute various issues that were of crucial importance to him during the period 1922–39. Unsurprisingly, The Criterion has been examined by a number of critics from a variety of different angles. John D. Margolis, for example, uses it to analyze Eliot’s literary career and “the evolution of his interests.” Yet, despite the extensive attention The Criterion has received over a number of decades, the vast majority of accounts either completely ignore, or give very little consideration to, one crucial element: the journal's deep-seated interest in agricultural and rural issues. Valentine Cunningham was one of the first to point out this interest, noting that “The Criterion became a kind of house journal for the spokesmen of post-war British ruralism.” Similarly, Steve Ellis in The English Eliot and Jed Esty in A Shrinking Island both acknowledge the importance of Eliot's concern with agriculture by quoting briefly from his Criterion commentaries. Additionally, David Matless momentarily records the agricultural figures who appeared in Eliot's journal: “Massingham, Stapledon, Gardiner, Lymington, and Mairet all contributed to Eliot's Criterion journal in the 1930s.” The aforementioned writers, however, neglect to expand in any detail upon such allusions to The Criterion, and consequently fail to emphasize sufficiently its significance as an agricultural platform.

My examination of the agricultural aspects of The Criterion will be multi-faceted. First and foremost, I shall offer a detailed consideration of Eliot's Criterion Commentaries in order to illustrate how these reveal his increasing preoccupation with agricultural issues. Furthermore, I shall stress that Eliot's appeal for a return to the land was not a solitary plea, but one reiterated by a number of other Criterion contributors. I shall then focus on the “Books of the Quarter” section of the journal, where Eliot chose influential authorities on agriculture to review a number of key texts. The significance of Eliot's book reviews has been acknowledged, but the agricultural books which he selected for review, and the reviewers themselves, have been almost entirely disregarded. Thus I shall bring to light these key texts, both by looking at the content of the reviews they received in The Criterion and by discussing the books and reviewers themselves.