Emily Hale

Emily Hale (October 27, 1891 – October 12, 1969) was an American speech and drama teacher, who was the longtime muse and confidante of the poet T. S. Eliot. There were 1,131 letters from Eliot to Hale deposited in Princeton University Library in 1956, described as one of the best-known sealed archives in the world for many years. The archive was opened to the public on January 2, 2020. Hale had specified that the letters would be embargoed for fifty years after both of their deaths, and the Princeton Library staff needed a few months to prepare them. The day the Hale letters were opened, Harvard's Houghton Library issued an unexpected statement that Eliot had prepared in 1960, to be opened when Hale's archives were released. Princeton then released Hale's summary of their relationship.