Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is a collection of whimsical poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. It is widely known as the basis for the record-setting musical Cats.
The poems were written during the 1930s and included by Eliot, under his assumed name "Old Possum", in letters to his godchildren. They were collected and published in 1939 with cover illustrations by the author, and quickly r...
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Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is a collection of whimsical poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. It is widely known as the basis for the record-setting musical Cats.
The poems were written during the 1930s and included by Eliot, under his assumed name "Old Possum", in letters to his godchildren. They were collected and published in 1939 with cover illustrations by the author, and quickly re-published in 1940, illustrated in full by Nicolas Bentley. It has also been published in reillustrated versions by Edward Gorey (1982) and Axel Scheffler (2009).
The contents of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, along with the name of the featured cat when appropriate, are:
In 1954 the English composer Alan Rawsthorne set six of the poems in a work for speaker and orchestra entitled Practical Cats, which was recorded soon after, with the actor Robert Donat as the speaker. The poems were set to music by Andrew Lloyd Webber for Cats, which...
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