T. S. Eliot

Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns)

(1888–1965) poet, critic, playwright, editor; born in St. Louis, Mo. Descended from an old Massachusetts and Unitarian family, he studied philosophy at Harvard (B.A. 1909; M.A. 1910), the Sorbonne (1910–11), and Oxford (1914–15). He remained a permanent resident of England but made occasional visits to the U.S.A. He took British citizenship in 1927, the same year he joined the Church of England and embraced Anglo-Catholicism. While teaching school in England (1915–17) and working as a bank clerk (1919–22), he reviewed books and was an editor of the literary magazine the Egoist (1917–19) and a founder-editor of the Criterion (1922–39). His main career was as an editor at the English publishing firm, Faber and Faber (1926–65), in which capacity he discovered and supported many modern writers. Although in some respects out of step with his century—being deeply religious and conservative, antisecular and antiromantic—he had an astonishing impact on his times. His literary criticism, in such works as The Sacred Wood (1920) and Homage to John Dryden (1924), set forth the literary tastes of a whole generation, while his own early poetry, such as Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) and "The Wasteland" (1922), virtually defined an era; later poems, such as Four Quartets (1935–42), although greatly admired, spoke to a smaller public; although several dealt with esoteric themes, his verse plays, such as Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1950), proved to be surprisingly popular. He personally remained aloof from most public events and political developments, but in 1948 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, formal recognition of his widespread influence.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.