Thomas Stearns Eliot

By: JoniMae Straughn

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Early LifeEliot was born in St. Louis Missouri

September 26, 1888His father was a businessman and his

mother was a poet and a social worker.He was the youngest of six surviving

childrenHe was named after his Grandfather

Thomas Stearns

Early Life continued..Eliot started writing when he was 14 but he

wasn’t 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 LifeWhile 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

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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.

EmploymentAfter 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 MarriageIn 1927 he converted to Anglicanism and

became a British citizen.In 1932 he left his wife in England to be a

professor at Harvard1938 Vivienne was committed to a

mental hospital where Eliot never visited her. She died in 1947.

The Single LifeEliot shared a home with John Hayward

until 1957.John Hayward collected Eloit’s works

and kept them organized.

Marriage… againEliot remarried to a woman named

Esme Fletcher.Unlike his first marriage he had known

Esme for years.

DeathIn the 1960s his health started failing

and he died of emphysema January 4, 1965.

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 DeathA stone commemorated to him was put in the

floor of Poet’s Corner in Westminister AbbeyFor decades after Eliot died he was criticized

for his writing styles and it wasn’t 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 WorksThe Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockAsh WednesdayThe Waste LandThe Hollow MenFour Quartets

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InfluencesEliot was influenced by Tennyson, Ezra

Pound, Dante Alghieri, etc.

Resourceshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliothttp://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poet

s/a_f/eliot/eliot.htmhttp://www.poetry-archive.com/e/eliot_t_

s.htmlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/o

ct/14/features.review