Tradition and the Individual Talent is an essay written by T. S. Eliot in 1920. It is very famous in literature criticism for all time. The essay deals with the concept of impersonality in art and the value of tradition in Eliot's opinion. He addresses to all his contemporary writers and poets (and also the future writers) who "would to be poets beyond their twenty-fifth year".

The essay can be divided in two parts. In the first part Eliot explains his thesis and then he clarifies who is in his opinion a traditional writer. In the second part the writer explains his concept of innovative writer and how we have to judge him.

We can find Eliot's thesis in the third line of the essay. According to him, the best and the most individual parts of a poet's work are that parts which report vigorously the immortality of dead poets. In his opinion, in fact, a good work isn't something isolated but something which reports tradition. Going on, Eliot defines his concept of tradition. Tradition isn't a process in which writers or poets copy and adhere to the immediate generation before them. On the contrary tradition is a difficult concept to follow and it implies an hard work. Tradition, according to Eliot, is linked with the historical sense which lets writers be conscious of the importance of the past. Writers in fact have to compose works being aware of the whole literature of all time and of all Europe. Literature of all time and of all Europe have, in fact, a simultaneous existence and compose a simultaneous order. Going on, Eliot explains that, if we want judge poets and writers, we have to consider also the dead artists because it exists an order between the old and the new. Finally, Eliot concludes his essay saying that poets who are aware of the order and the relation between the old and the new (so between their contemporary works and the dead poet's work), will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.