From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thomas Stearns Eliot (September
26, 1888–January 4, 1965) was an Anglo-American poet, playwright, and literary
critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century.[3] The
first poem he became known for, The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, was started in February 1910 and
published in Chicago in June 1915, and is regarded as a masterpiece of the
modernist movement.[4] It
was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language,
including Gerontion(1920), The
Waste Land (1922), The
Hollow Men (1925), Ash
Wednesday(1930), and Four
Quartets (1945). He is also
known for his seven plays, particularly Murder
in the Cathedral(1935).
Born in Saint Louis, Missouri, and educated at Harvard,
Eliot studied philosophy at the Sorbonne for
a year, then won a scholarship to Oxford in
1914, becoming a British citizen when he was 39. "[M]y poetry has obviously
more in common with my distinguished contemporaries in America than with
anything written in my generation in England," he said of his nationality and
its role in his work. "It wouldn't be what it is, and I imagine it wouldn't be
so good ... if I'd been born in England, and it wouldn't be what it is if I'd
stayed in America. It's a combination of things. But in its sources, in its
emotional springs, it comes from America."[5] He
was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.