Renascence & Other Poems
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Tenderness and relaxed reverie in these photos of Jack London and T. S. Eliot, both aged either 8 or 9 (possibly 1885, 1896/97). Also portraits of retreat. Jack London is possibly in Heinold’s Saloon on the San Franciscan seafront, his reading a respite from the hardship of his upbringing, at work 12-18 hours daily; Eliot in his family’s summer home in Massachusetts, his reading an escape from illness and isolation – “setting the drug of dreams against the pain of living,” wrote one biographer.

The narcotic analgesia of reading.