T. S. Eliot Biography: Life, Education, marriage, Majors writing,Died

T. S. Eliot Profile

Name: T.S. Eliot

Full Name: Thomas Stearns Eliot

Birth Date: September 26, 1888

Birth Place: St. Louis, Missouri, United States

Death Date: January 4, 1965

Death Place: Kensington, United Kingdom

Cause of death: Emphysema

Death of Age: 76

Buried Place: St Michael & All Angels' Church, East Coker, United Kingdom

Citizenship: American (1888–1927) British (1927–1965)

Education: Harvard University (AB, AM, PhD candidate) Merton College, Oxford

Period: 1905–1965

Literary movement: Modernism

Parents: Henry Ware Eliot (Father) Charlotte Champe Stearns (Mother)

Number of Siblings: 6

1. Ada Sheffield (Sister)

2. Theodora Sterling Eliot (Sister)

3. Marian Cushing Eliot (Sister)

4. Margaret Dawes Eliot (Sister)

5. Charlotte Smith (Sister)

6. Henry Ware Eliot, Jr. ( Brother)

Spouse(s): 1. Vivienne Haigh-Wood ​ (m. 1915; sep. 1932)

                   2. Esmé Valerie Fletcher ​ (m. 1957; his death 1965)

Number of Children: No

Early Life and Education

T. S. Eliot, one of the greatest poets of modern age. He was a publisher, playwright, essayist, literary and social critic and arguably the most important English language poet of the 20th century. He was born on the 26th September 1888 at St. Louis, Missourt. Missourt is an industrial city in the center of the USA. His ancestors migrated to America in 1668 from East Coker. The boy Eliot was first sent to school at St. Louis Day School where he studied till 1905. Then he went to Harvard University in 1906. His filed of study was philosophy. 

At school he was considered a superb student and in 1900 won a gold medal for Latin. He began writing at college and showed a marked technical proficiency. In 1897, his father built a holiday resort at Eastern point nearest Cape Ann in New England and here the poet passed his school vacations. The poet was at Harvard from 1906-1910 when he pursued a wide ranging course of studies in language and literature.

Eliot graduated from Harvard in 1910. After graduated from Harvard university he came to Europe to complete his studies and because of the war, stayed in England. Where he did low paid work as a teacher and bank clerk, while writing reviews of startling originality.

Then he went to France and spent a year at the Sorborne University In Paris studying widely in many contemporary writers. In 1911, from Paris Eliot went to Bavarla, Germany where he came into contact with many German writers. He returned to Harvard later in the year.

In 1913, he was elected president of the Harvard Philosophical Club. With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 Eliot had to leave Germany.

He came to England and continued his studies at Oxford till 1915. In 1916, he submitted his thesis on the philosophy of Bradley for the Doctorate Degree but never returned to Harvard to take the degree.

Like many other young writers, he was helped and influenced at this time by Ezra Pound, on whose advice he is said to have cut his most famous poem, The waste Land.

In 1914 he met Ezra Pound in London and he introduced the poet to the lively literary circles of London.

Married

Eliot married an English girl Vivinne Haith in July 1915 and settled in London. He devorced Vivinne Haith September 1932. His second wife Esmé Valerie Fletcher (m. 1957; his death 1965).

Did TS Eliot have kids?

Thomas Stern Eliot had no children even though he had two wives.

T.S. Eliot Work Place

In 1917, he gave up teaching and entered the Poreign Department of Lloys Bank. In 1918, he registered for the U.S. Navy but was not taken to service owing to his poor health.

He worked as assistant editor of The Egoist for 1917-1919. In 1925, he joined publishing firm Faber and Faber.

During this time he had also been writing poetry, the publication of The Waste Land in 1922 attracted wide interest.

T.S.Eliot's Poetry

T.S.Eliot's poetry career has been divided into five periods.

1. The First Period

2. The Second Period

3. The Third

4. The Fourth

5. The Fifth

1.The First Period: The First Period start in 1905 and end in 1909. This period called Eliot's Juvenilia. The poems of this period are teenage and mere schoolboy exercises. These poems still show signs of poetic talent. They were published in the many kinds of college and school magazines named the “Smith Academy  Record and the Harvard Advocate".

2.The Second Period: This period the most significant poems of this are listed below.

*The  Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

*The Preludes

*Portrait of a Lady

*The Boston Evening Transcript

*Rhapsody on a Windy Night

*Mr. Apollinax

3. The Third Period: The Third period starts in 1918 and ended in 1925. The most significant poems of this are listed below.

*The Waste Land

*The Hollow Men

*Gerontion

*A Cooling Egg

*Sweeney Erect

*Sweeney among the Nightingales

*Burbank with a Baedeker

4.The Fourth Period: This period started in 1925 and ended in 1935. This period called the period of “Eliot's Christian Poetry".The following are the important poems of this Christian period. The poems are listed below:

* The Journey of the Magi

* Ash Wednesda

* Coriolan

* Marina

* Animila

* A Number of minor and unfinished poems

* Choruses from The Rock

5.The Fifth Period: This period of T.S.Eliot's religious poetry is Independent of the previous Christian Poetry. It is the period of 4 Quartet which was published as the following poems. This poem is listed below:

*Little Gidding

*Burnt Norton

*The Dry Salvages

*East Coker

DRAMA

T.S.Eliot endeavoured to revive English poetic drama. His poetic drama is listed below:

*The Elder Statesman

*The Confidential Clerk

*The Cocktail Party

*The Family Reunion

*The Rock, A pageant Play

*Murder in the Cathedral

PROSE

Thomas Sterns Eliot's prose was published in the form of articles and essays in the various periodicals and journals of the day. The following prose is the literary essays which are highly admired because of his critical pronouncement.

* The English Metaphysical Poets

* On Poetry and Poets

* Tradition and Individual Talent

* The Frontiers of Criticism

* The Function of Criticism

* Poetry and Drama

* To Criticise the Critic

* The idea of the Christian Society

* Selected Essays

* The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

* Notes towards a Definition of Culture

Notable Awards and Achievements

Why did TS Eliot win the Nobel Prize?

Thomas Stearns was awarded Nobel Prize in literature “for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry."

✓He was awarded Nobel Prize for the poem “The Waste Land” in 1948.

✓He was also awarded Order of Merit in 1948.

✓Laurence Olivier Mastercard Award for Best New Musical

✓Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.

✓Tony Award for Best Play in 1950.

✓Tony Award for Best Original Score 1983.

✓Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical in 1983.

✓Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Broadway Musical in 1983.

✓New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play 1950

✓Hanseatic Goethe Prize

✓Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play in 1950.

Died

He died in London on the 4th January 1965.