T. S.
Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in Missouri on September 26, 1888.
He lived in St. Louis during the first eighteen years of his life
and attended Harvard University. In 1910, he left the United States
for the Sorbonne, having earned both undergraduate and masters
degrees and having contributed several poems to the Harvard
Advocate. After a year in Paris, he returned to Harvard to
pursue a doctorate in philosophy, but returned to Europe and settled
in England in 1914. The following year, he married Vivienne
Haigh-Wood and began working in London, first as a teacher, and
later for Lloyd's Bank.
It was in London that Eliot came under the influence of his
contemporary Ezra
Pound, who recognized his poetic genius at once, and assisted in
the publication of his work in a number of magazines, most notably
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in Poetry in 1915. His
first book of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, was
published in 1917, and immediately established him as a leading poet
of the avant-garde. With the publication of The Waste Land in
1922, now considered by many to be the single most influential
poetic work of the twentieth century, Eliot's reputation began to
grow to nearly mythic proportions; by 1930, and for the next thirty
years, he was the most dominant figure in poetry and literary
criticism in the English-speaking world.
As a poet, he transmuted his affinity for the English
metaphysical poets of the 17th century (most notably John Donne) and the 19th
century French symbolist poets (including Baudelaire and Laforgue)
into radical innovations in poetic technique and subject matter. His
poems in many respects articulated the disillusionment of a younger
post-World-War-I generation with the values and conventions—both
literary and social—of the Victorian era. As a critic also, he had
an enormous impact on contemporary literary taste, propounding views
that, after his conversion to orthodox Christianity in the late
thirties, were increasingly based in social and religious
conservatism. His major later poems include Ash Wednesday
(1930) and Four Quartets (1943); his books of literary and
social criticism include The Sacred Wood (1920), The Use
of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), After Strange
Gods (1934), and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture
(1940). Eliot was also an important playwright, whose verse dramas
include Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion,
and The Cocktail Party.
He became a British citizen in 1927; long associated with the
publishing house of Faber & Faber, he published many younger
poets, and eventually became director of the firm. After a
notoriously unhappy first marriage, Eliot separated from his first
wife in 1933, and was remarried, to Valerie Fletcher, in 1956. T. S.
Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, and died in
London in 1965.
This bio was last updated on Aug 9, 2001.
Angus McBean Photograph, © Harvard Theatre
Collection. Used by permission.
A Selected Bibliography
Poetry
Prufrock and Other
Observations (1917) Poems
(1919) The Waste Land (1922)
Poems, 1909-1925 (1925)
Ash Wednesday (1930)
East Coker (1940)
Burnt Norton (1941)
The Dry Salvages (1941)
Four Quartets (1943)
The Complete Poems and Plays
(1952) Collected Poems (1962)
Prose
The Sacred Wood
(1920) Andrew Marvell (1922)
For Lancelot Andrews (1928)
Dante (1929)
Tradition and Experimentation in
Present-Day Literature (1929)
Thoughts After Lambeth (1931)
John Dryden (1932)
The Use of Poetry and the Use of
Criticism (1933) After Strange
Gods (1933) Elizabethan
Essays (1934) Essays Ancient and
Modern (1936) The Idea of a
Christian Society (1940) The
Classics and The Man of Letters (1942)
Notes Towards the Definition of
Culture (1949) Poetry and
Drama (1951) The Three Voices of
Poetry (1954) Religious Drama:
Mediaeval and Modern (1954)
Drama
Sweeney Agonistes
(1932) The Rock (1934)
Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
The Family Reunion (1939)
The Cocktail Party (1950)
The Confidential Clerk (1953)
The Elder Statesman (1958)
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T. S. Eliot exhibits on this site:
T. S. Eliot exhibits elsewhere on the web:
- Poetry & Prose of T. S. Eliot
From the
Columbia University Bartleby Library: Prufrock and Other
Observations (1917), Poems (1920), The Waste
Land (1922), and The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and
Criticism (1920).
- T. S. Eliot
Biography, critical overview,
bibliography, and links from Addison-Wesley's Literature
Online, "A site to support Kennedy & Gioia's
Literature, 7th Edition."
- What
the Thunder Said
An excellent site devoted to the works
and life of T. S. Eliot, created by Raymond Camden.
- Thomas Stearns Eliot
At the Nobel Prize
site.
- tseliot campfire chat
A discussion board
dedicated to T. S. Eliot.
- T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
A collection of
critical, historical, and biographical information at the Modern
American Poetry site.
- Fight to Publish Memoir of T. S. Eliot's Spurned
Love
From The Sunday Times, March 19
2000.
- T. S. Eliot and Anti-Semitism
From
Contemporary Review, December 01 1999 by R. F.
Fleissner.
- T.
S. Eliot
An audio introduction to Eliot's "The Love Song
of J. Alfred Prufrock" by Huck Gutman, Professor of English at the
University of Vermont. |
La
Figlia Che Piange (audio only)
|