Nobel laureate T S Eliot, considered the greatest poet of the 20th century, was dogged throughout his later years by the charge that he was a cruel husband and an anti-Semitic. Now, more than 40 years after his death, a new volume of letters has finally debunked the myth about the personality of Eliot and restores the personal reputation of the writer, The Sunday Times reported.

The correspondence, mostly written by and to Eliot during the 1920s, shows that the American-born poet was often deeply concerned about the severe ill-health of his wife, Vivien, a former Cambridge governess. The couple had married in 1915 when Eliot was 26. He was so driven to despair by her undiagnosed yet debilitating medical and mental problems that he railed at her doctors, calling one a “German brute”. He even wrote, “I have tried to kill myself.”In April 1924, Eliot wrote to his brother, “The last illness of V’s has been indescribable. She suffered more in spirit than ever before. I have not been able to leave her for three months.”

The letters, to be published this week and compiled with the help of Eliot’s second wife, show him in a different light.

The correspondence also reveals that Eliot had many Jewish friends, which might rid the argument that he was anti-Semitic. One friend was Horace Kallen, the American academic, and their correspondence shows Eliot helped to get European Jews to America during the Second World War.