It was sent by US-born poet TS Eliot to Jacob Isaacs, an author and lecturer at Queen Mary University in London in 1957 and was unearthed during a project to catalogue the archives of Isaacs, who was a friend of Eliot. In the letter, Eliot writes he cannot remember what he meant in one of his old essays, Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca, which was about to be republished.

He asks Isaacs if he could "throw any light" on the identity of Webster, who was referred to in the essay.

The letter was part of a collection donated to Queen Mary by Isaacs's wife upon his death in 1973.