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T.S. Eliot: America's Poet

© Susan Jensen

Thomas Stearns (T.S.) Eliot emerged from a distinguished family to become one of the country's greatest poets and playwrights. He was born on September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Henry Ware Eliot, Sr., operated a successful business. T.S.'s mother, Charlotte Champe Stearns, wrote prose and religious poetry. She also supported local charities.

T.S. received his early education at Milton Academy, a private boarding school near Boston, Massachusetts. He also studied philosophy at Harvard, earning his undergraduate degree in 1909. A year later, he earned his M.A. also in philosophy. Afterward, he studied literature and languages at the Sorbonne in Paris, France.

In 1914, T.S. settled permanently in London. He worked first as a teacher and later as a clerk at Lloyd's Bank. In his spare time, he wrote poetry. His first poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, appeared in 1917. The verses tell the story of a man worried about his appearance to others, especially women. Probably his greatest poem, The Waste Land was published in 1922; it expressed his frustration with Europe's spiritual decline.

Also in 1922, T.S. Eliot founded the literary journal, Criterion. He edited the volume for 17 years. In 1925, he joined the publishing firm of Faber and Gwyer, which later became Faber and Faber. He kept this post until his death in 1965.

In the late 1920s and 1930s, he wrote, lectured and taught in Britain and the United States. During the 1930s and beyond, T.S. turned his talent to writing plays, including: Murder in the Cathedral (1935), The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1950), The Confidential Clerk (1954), and The Elder Statesman (1958).

In 1948, T.S. Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The great poet was married twice, first to Vivian Haigh-Wood, who suffered from mental instability. She died in an institution in 1947. Ten years later, he married his assistant, Valerie Fletcher, with whom he lived happily until his death in 1965. I found no record of him having any children.

T.S. Eliot made many contributions to literature. He introduced new forms of poetry, influenced modern literary criticism, and gave the world some of its greatest poetry.

Sources:

Encarta biography at http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?...

T.S. Eliot at Biography http://www.biography.com

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