The first wife of TS Eliot refused to accept that their marriage was over, explaining away his absence from her life with deluded excuses, her diary reveals.

Vivien Haigh-Wood was devastated when her relationship with one of the 20th century’s most important writers ended with their separation in 1933.

Diary entries of 1934 and 1935 show she convinced herself that he had been kidnapped and needed to be rescued, or that she had met an impostor, rather than the real Eliot, at a lawyer’s office to discuss their separation. In one entry, she wrote: “My belief is that he wants to get back to me, & is in chains.”

Months later, despite Eliot’s attempts to distance himself from her, Vivien (sometimes spelled Vivienne) still awaited his return: “The only thing I yearn for & bleed for is the day when Tom calmly turns the keys in this front door, walks leisurely in, finds the room door key, & then has a good look all round, smiles with quiet satisfaction, draws a long breath, & goes quietly to his dear books & to his bed. And if he can then say, God bless my little Welsh wife Vivienne. Surely he will say that.”

Passages from her diaries, deciphered from her minute handwriting, will be included in a 950-page edition of Eliot’s correspondence, which Faber & Faber will publish on 22 June. It is the seventh of 20 planned volumes devoted to Thomas Stearns Eliot, winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1948, whose masterpieces included The Waste Land.

He married Vivien in 1915, but her mental health took its toll on their relationship. Her symptoms suggest bipolar disorder or paranoid schizophrenia. She died in 1947, aged 58, having been committed to an asylum in 1938.

The previous volume, which focused entirely on 1932 and 1933, showed Eliot’s desperation to escape the “hideous farce” of their marriage, as the Guardian reported last year.

The Letters of TS Eliot: Volume 7 is devoted to 1934 and 1935. It expands further on Vivien’s deteriorating mind and her inability to accept that Eliot no longer wanted her.

Prof John Haffenden, an eminent academic and the volume’s editor, told the Guardian that the material offers “a curious sensation of going into the vortex of her mind as she gets more and more troubled. It’s all rather terrifying and awful. It does show her mental state – tormented and self-tormenting.”

In December 1934, an exasperated Eliot eventually dispatched bailiffs to Vivien’s flat to seize his books and papers. Weeks later, he wrote to his brother that the pressures of needing to write a play within three months was made worse by Vivien giving him “the maximum of trouble and legal expense in getting my property”. Reassuring himself about her state of mind, he continued: “Apparently, I can dismiss from mind the fear of her molesting me.”

Among Vivien’s correspondence is a 1935 letter to her solicitors. She wrote: “If my husband is free, and in his right mind, why should he go to the vast expense of employing hired men to force an entry into my flat to get hold of some old papers when he has had access to the flat the whole time?”

Haffenden, a senior research fellow at the University of London, said: “This volume gives in the fullest possible detail Vivien’s side of the story, by way of her letters to legal advisers and family and friends. The collection also quotes extensively from Vivien’s amazingly detailed, angst-ridden, confused diaries. The majority have never been published before.”

In 1957, Eliot married his secretary, Valerie, who died in 2012, having wanted to make her husband’s correspondence available to the public. Haffenden said: “She felt it only fair that readers of Eliot’s letters should also be able to read Vivien’s thoughts and try to understand the awful mental disturbances she suffered.”

Vivien’s diary reflects that she tried in vain to see him. She stalked him at Faber & Faber’s offices, where he worked as an editor. Staff clearly tried to keep her from him. Diary entries record that she telephoned repeatedly.

She complained about Faber’s Irish secretary, describing her as “a great big bullying looking woman” who “said she had her orders, & I should have replied that I have my RIGHTS. I am SO feeble, wilted & easily fooled by these people. When I said to her that Tom [could] come home at any moment, she said rudely ‘I know he can’.”

The material makes the reader “feel for everyone involved”, Haffenden said.

