Thomas Stearns Eliot By: JoniMae Straughn

Early Life Eliot was born in St. Louis Missouri September 26, 1888 His father was a businessman and his mother was a poet and a social worker. He was the youngest of six surviving children He was named after his Grandfather Thomas Stearns

Early Life continued.. Eliot started writing when he was 14 but he wasnt satisfied with what he wrote. When he was 15 he wrote a poem as a school exercise and it was published in his school record. He went to Smith Academy and Milton Academy before studying philosophy at Harvard University from 1906 to 1909

College Life While he was at Harvard he read The Symbolist Movement In Poetry by Arthur Symon. He said this book changed the course of his life. After Graduating he worked as a philosophy assistant at Harvard and he moved to Paris to study philosophy. When he came back to the United States he studied Indian philosophy and Sanskrit until 1914

College Life continued.. He received a scholarship to Merton College in Oxford, England (1914) He left Oxford that same year after writing a friend saying "I hate university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures on the walls... Oxford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead."

Marriage He married Vivienne Haigh-Wood June 26, 1915 On their honeymoon he slept in a deck chair while she trashed the bedroom. He wrote in his 60s that "I came to persuade myself that I was in love with Vivienne simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also under the influence of [Ezra] Pound) that she would save the poet by keeping him in England. To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land."

Marriage continued.. Eliot invited his friend Bertrand Russell over for dinner and he immediately hit it off with Vivienne. It is said that their relationship lasted for several years. Russell ended his relationship with Vivienne for another woman.

Employment After marrying Vivienne he had several teaching jobs at different colleges in England. He worked at a bank before finding a more permanent job at a publishing firm called Faber and Gwyer where he became a director.

A Failing Marriage In 1927 he converted to Anglicanism and became a British citizen. In 1932 he left his wife in England to be a professor at Harvard 1938 Vivienne was committed to a mental hospital where Eliot never visited her. She died in 1947.

The Single Life Eliot shared a home with John Hayward until John Hayward collected Eloits works and kept them organized.

Marriage… again Eliot remarried to a woman named Esme Fletcher. Unlike his first marriage he had known Esme for years.

Death In the 1960s his health started failing and he died of emphysema January 4, His body was cremated and above his ashes is a plaque that says In my beginning is my end and in my end is my beginning

After Death A stone commemorated to him was put in the floor of Poets Corner in Westminister Abbey For decades after Eliot died he was criticized for his writing styles and it wasnt until much much later that he was recognized as one of the twentieth centuries major poets. Most of his works can be found at the various colleges he worked with.

Major Works The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Ash Wednesday The Waste Land The Hollow Men Four Quartets

Influences Eliot was influenced by Tennyson, Ezra Pound, Dante Alghieri, etc.

Resources s/a_f/eliot/eliot.htm s/a_f/eliot/eliot.htm archive.com/e/eliot_t_s.html archive.com/e/eliot_t_s.html ct/14/features.review ct/14/features.review