Eliot, T.S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965

American poet and critic.

English poet, playwright, critic, editor, and publisher.

Revolutionary American born poet, critic and playwright, who lived in England and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.

Eliot was a poet, dramatist, and critic. Browne (1900-1980) directed and taught modern and medieval religious drama, in England and America. He was the first director of T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral.

T.S. Eliot, American poet, playwright, and critic, served the Faber and Faber publishing firm in various capacities, 1925-1965, including poetry editor and as a member of the advisory board.

T. S. Eliot was a poet, dramatist, and critic. Father Geoffrey Curtis was an Anglican clergyman, author, and member of the monastic Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield (England).

T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888-1965) was an American-British poet, dramatist, and critic, a director at the British publishing firm of Faber and Faber, and editor of The criterion. Martin Shaw (1875-1958) was an English composer who worked in the theater and also on Anglican hymnody.

T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888-1965) was an American-British poet, dramatist, and critic, a director at the British publishing firm of Faber and Faber, and editor of The criterion . Martin Shaw (1875-1958) was an English composer who worked in the theater and also on Anglican hymnody.

Poet.

English poet and critic.

T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot, was a poet, playwright, and literary critic. He was born in the United States and moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalized as a British subject in 1927.

Eliot (Harvard College Class of 1909) earned his Harvard AB in 1910 and his AM in 1911. He held the position of Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry in 1932-1933, and taught English 26 (Contemporary English Literature, 1890 to the present time) with Dr. Theodore Spencer.

American born English poet and critic.

Eliot was an American poet, dramatist, and critic.

Eliot was an American-British poet, dramatist, and critic.

T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888-1965), poet, critic, and dramatist.

American author.

American-born poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Became a British citizen at age 39.

Eliot was an American poet, dramatist, and critic. Mary Trevelyan (1897-1983) was a close friend of Eliot's during the 1940s and 1950s.

T.S. Eliot was an American and British poet, playwright, literary critic, and essayist.

T. S. Eliot was an American and British poet, playwright, literary critic, and essayist.

American-born English poet, dramatist, literary critic, editor, and publisher; recipient of the 1948 Nobel Prize for Literature.

American-born English poet.

Eliot was a poet, dramatist, and critic.

Eliot was a poet, dramatist, and critic. Browne (1900-1980) directed and taught modern and medieval religious drama, in England and America. He was the first director of T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral .

Eliot was an American poet, dramatist, and critic. Mary Trevelyan was a close friend of Eliot's during the 1940s and 1950s.

Poet and critic.

Ex-patriate American poet.

T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888-1965) was an American-British poet, dramatist, and critic, who received an AB degree from Harvard College in 1909. Conrad Aiken (1889-1973) was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer who received an AB from Harvard College in 1911. Aiken and Eliot met at Harvard in 1907 and became lifelong friends.

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965), a poet, critic, editor, and playwright, was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He received a B. A. in 1909 and an M. A. in 1910 from Harvard, where he also pursued a doctoral degree in philosophy. In 1915, he married Vivienne (Vivien) Haigh-Wood. He completed his dissertation in 1916 while living in England and submitted it to Harvard, but was unable to defend it. He was literary editor of the avant-garde magazine The Egoist. In the Spring 1917, he published his first book of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations. In 1922, Eliot published "The Waste Land" and became editor of The Criterion. 1927 was a momentous year for Eliot. In June, he was baptized into the Church of England, and, in November, became a British citizen. His religion then became a central component of his life and his poetry reflected this religious conversion. In 1948, Eliot received both the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

American-English poet.

English author.

T. S. Eliot was an American poet, dramatist, and critic; his brother Henry Ware Eliot was a writer and archeologist.

Epithet: poet

T. S. Eliot was a poet, critic, and dramatist. He was editor of The Criterion (1923-1929) and director of the British publishing firm of Faber & Faber.

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri, to Charlotte Stearns and Henry Ware Eliot. His parents were from Massachusetts, and during Eliot’s childhood the family spent summers in Gloucester. Eliot attended Smith Academy in St. Louis (1898-1905), Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts (1905-1906), Harvard University (B.A., 1909; M.A., 1911; Ph.D. courses in philosophy, 1911-1914), University of Paris-Sorbonne (1910-1911), and Merton College, Oxford University (1914-1915). After leaving Oxford in 1915, Eliot remained in England and married Vivienne Haigh Wood; they were separated in 1932, and she died in 1947. Eliot worked first as a teacher and then, from 1917 to 1925, as a clerk at Lloyds Bank in London, at the same time supplementing his income by working as a reviewer, lecturer, and essayist. He was an assistant editor at The Egoist (1917-1919) and founded and edited the literary quarterly The Criterion (1922-1939). Eliot accepted a position as an editor at publishers Faber and Gwyer (later Faber and Faber) in 1925 and eventually became a director of the firm. Eliot was baptized into the Anglican Church and became a naturalized British subject in 1927. In 1957, he married Valerie Fletcher, his secretary. Eliot died from emphysema in London, England, on January 4, 1965. His ashes were buried in East Coker, the town from which his ancestors had immigrated to America.

Eliot, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, is considered one of the most influential writers in modern literature. He wrote The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in 1911, at age twenty-three. Conrad Aiken, a friend of Eliot’s from Harvard, showed a copy to Ezra Pound, who arranged for its publication in Poetry magazine and then in Eliot’s first book, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917). The Waste Land was completed in 1922, with editorial suggestions from Pound, and won a $2,000 award from the Dial . Poems 1909-1925 (1925) included The Hollow Men, which bridges the philosophical despair of his earlier works and the religious themes of his next poems, Journey of the Magi (1927), A Song for Simeon (1928), Animula (1929), Marina (1930), Triumphal March (1931), and the better-known Ash-Wednesday (1930). Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, light verse composed for his godchildren, was published in 1939. Eliot’s wartime poetry, Four Quartets (1943), containing Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding, was considered by critics and Eliot to be his best work.

Following World War II, Eliot focused on drama and literary essays. He had written his first play, Sweeney Agonistes (1932), in the 1920s. Murder in the Cathedral was performed and published in 1935, and The Family Reunion was performed and published in 1939. In the 1940s and 1950s Eliot wrote The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential Clerk (1953), and The Elder Statesman (1958), all comedies. Eliot visited and lectured at numerous universities throughout his life. He delivered the Clark Lectures at Cambridge in 1926, the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard University in 1932, the Turnbull Lectures at Johns Hopkins University and the Page-Barbour Lectures at the University of Virginia in 1933, and the Theodore Spencer Memorial Lecture at Harvard in 1950; all of these and other lectures were later published. Eliot’s critical essays, along with those of I. A. Richards, became the basis of the New Criticism of the twentieth century.

Biography

Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965), was a poet, dramatist, and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Among his most famous writings are the poems The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday and Four Quartets; the plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party; and the essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent".

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965), a poet, critic, editor, and playwright, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the seventh child of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Champe Stearns. He attended Smith Academy, founded by his grandfather William Greenleaf Eliot, a Unitarian minister, until he was sixteen. In 1905, he left St. Louis to study for a year at Milton Academy outside Boston and then entered Harvard University in 1906. At Harvard, he received a B. A. in 1909 and an M. A. in 1910. In the autumn of 1910, he went to the Sorbonne in Paris for a year of postgraduate study.

Eliot returned to Harvard to pursue a doctoral degree in philosophy. He studied Eastern and Western philosophies and learned Sanskrit in order to read the original texts. In 1913, he read Bradley's Appearance and Reality, which became the basis for his dissertation entitled "The Nature of Objects, with reference to the philosophy of F. H. Bradley" (later published as Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley in 1964). 1914 saw his return to England, on a travelling fellowship. The following year he married Vivienne (Vivien) Haigh-Wood, whom he met through a mutual friend. He completed his dissertation in 1916 while living in England and submitted it to Harvard. Unfortunately, World War I had begun, and it became too dangerous to sail back to America, so he was not able to defend his dissertation for the Ph. D. degree.

In an effort to support himself and his new wife, Eliot took on a variety of positions including teaching at schools in High Wycombe and Highgate, London; writing book reviews; and through the University of London extension board, lecturing at evening extension courses. In addition, he became literary editor of the avant-garde magazine The Egoist . In the spring of 1917, he finally found steady employment; his language abilities qualified him for a job in the Colonial and Foreign Department of Lloyds Bank, in the City of London, where he worked on foreign accounts. The security of this position allowed him to return to his poetry, and later that year he published his first book of poetry Prufrock and Other Observations .

It was to be private pain that brought about his most famous poem "The Waste Land." January 1919 brought news of the death of his father, Henry Ware Eliot. Eliot's hasty marriage and settlement in England had created a rift between Eliot and his parents, and this news destroyed any hope of a full reconciliation. At the same time, Vivien's own physical and mental health were deteriorating and causing great financial and emotional strain on Eliot.

The success Eliot gained from "The Waste Land" provided him with the opportunity to edit his own literary journal, The Criterion . Lady Rothermere, wife of Viscount Rothermere, publisher of the Daily Mail, funded the venture.

The first issue of The Criterion appeared in October, 1922. Vivien was to contribute sketches, reviews, and poems to The Criterion under various pseudonyms.

Eliot's combined talent for literary endeavors and business sense brought him to the attention of Geoffrey Faber who, in 1925, recruited him as literary editor and board of directors' member of his new publishing firm, Faber and Gwyer; four years later it became Faber and Faber. Eliot left Lloyds and began a relationship with Faber and Faber that continued until the end of his career.

1927 was to be a personally momentous year for Eliot. In June, he was baptized into the Church of England and, in November, became a British citizen. His religion then became a central component of his life.

Eliot's poetry now reflected his religious conversion and includes his Ariel poems: "Journey of the Magi" (1927), "A Song for Simeon" (1928), "Animula" (1929), "Marina" (1930), and the longer poem "Ash Wednesday" (1930).

In June 1935 the church drama Murder in the Cathedral was performed in the chapter house of Canterbury Cathedral for the Canterbury Festival. It had been commissioned by the Bishop of Chichester, George Bell.

Three years later Vivien's brother, Maurice, had Vivien committed to Northumberland House, a mental hospital north of London. Eliot's Anglicanism would not allow for a divorce, but he never saw Vivien again. She died in 1947.

The start of World War saw the demise of The Criterion . During this time he wrote the play The Family Reunion (1939) and the three final poems that make up the Four Quartets (1943). "Burnt Norton" (1934) had been previously published in Collected Poems 1909-1935 . "East Coker" (1940) was named after the Somerset village from which Eliot's ancestor Andrew Eliot had departed for America, circa 1669. "The Dry Salvages" (1941) recounted Eliot's experience as a boy sailing on the Mississippi River and on the coast of Massachusetts. "Little Gidding" (1942) is a village in Cambridgeshire visited by Eliot in 1936. Little Gidding was home to a religious community from 1625 to 1998.

After World War II, Eliot wrote no more major poetry. Instead he wrote cultural criticisms suchs Notes toward a Definition of Culture (1948); the plays The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958); and literary essays. In 1948, Eliot received both the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In January 1957, he married his secretary (Esmé) Valerie Fletcher, with whom he lived until his death on January 4, 1965, at his home in London.

T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He was educated at Smith Academy, Milton Academy and Harvard University and moved to England in 1914. He also studied at the Sorbonne and Oxford University. He was naturalized as a British Subject in 1927. He is generally regarded as one of the central figures in 20th century English Literature. "The Waste Land" (1922) is considered a landmark of modernist poetry. Other poetic works include Prufrock and Other Observations and Four Quartets. In addition to his poetry, he gained renown as a dramatist, critic, and editor. Among his plays are Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1940). His critical essays on literature have been very influential. He was editor of The Egoist 1917-19, founder and editor of The Criterion 1922-39, and literary editor at Faber and Faber 1925-65. Chief among his many awards was the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. Eliot died in London. The University of Victoria Libraries Special Collections has a mandate to acquire literary papers.

There are also Eliot letters in the Betjeman and Read fonds.

T.S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest son of Henry Ware Eliot (1843-1919) and Charlotte Stearns Eliot (nee Charlotte Champe Stearns, 1843-1929). One of the Eliot's children had died in infancy, but five siblings remained to share T.S. Eliot's life: Ada (1869-1943), Margaret (1871-1956), Charlotte (1874-1926), Marian (1877-1964) and Henry (1879-1947).

In his youth, Eliot attended private schools, and then went to Harvard where he studied French literature. After graduation in 1910 he spent a year in Paris, returned to Harvard for doctoral studies in philosophy (1911-14), and went to seminars of the visiting lecturer Bertrand Russell, who became a friend. Eliot arrived in Europe on a travelling fellowship in 1914, landing in London and more particularly in Bloomsbury. His first literary contacts were other expatriate Americans, notably Ezra pound, and he spent some time in the Autumn of that year studying philosophy at Merton College, Oxford.

In 1915, Eliot published 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' in 'Poetry' magazine, and in the same year he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood, making their first home in Bertrand Russell's Bury Street flat. In need of a steady income, Eliot became a teacher, and then a clerk at Lloyd's bank. In 1919, he published 'Poems' with Hogarth Press, the publishing house presided over by Leonard and Virginia Woolf, and in 1923 Hogarth came out with the English edition of 'The Waste Land'. In 1922 he began his own literary magazine 'The Criterion', which continued publication until 1939.

In 1925 he joined the publishing firm of Faber, with whom he published 'Murder in the Cathedral' (1935) and 'The Family Reunion' (1939). During the same period, he became great friends with John Davy Hayward, Geoffrey Faber and Frank Morley, a coterie that - once establised in the late 1920s - would last for the next 30 years. Hayward eventually became indispensable to Eliot as his literary advisor, providing particularly helpful suggestions for improvements in the phrasing and construction of 'Four Quartets' (1935-42). During the war he also became the self-styled 'Keeper of the Eliot Archive' and thereafter Eliot systematically gave Hayward groups of manuscripts and typescripts, and all printed editions.

After the war, Eliot moved into a flat with Hayward, having separated from his wife, Vivienne, several years earlier. At the same time, Eliot's stature as poet, dramatist and critic increased, with many arguing that he was England's greatest living poet. In 1938 he was awarded an honorary degree by Cambridge University and in 1948 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Order of Merit. In 1957 Eliot married Valerie Fletcher.