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The Letters of TS Eliot, Volume 2: 1923-1925. Edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton Faber Faber, 878pp. £35

ARE WE RIGHT to clamour for biographical information about writers we admire? Beckett already has three biographies, but the story is not complete until we can consult the letters to his lady friend, Barbara Bray. They are safe in Trinity, but will we have to wait to read them until his editors, who are tirelessly compiling and publishing them, arrive at the proper chronological point? Knowing both Beckett and Bray, their missives are bound to be fiercely discreet, but she was involved in his literary life from the BBC play All That Fallonwards, often his first confidante. In any case, surely the important thing when it comes to writers’ letters is the influence on the work, not gossip or tedious quotidian business.