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T. S. Eliot

1888–1965
https://tseliot.com/
Image of T.S. Eliot.
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The 1948 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, T.S. Eliot is highly distinguished as a poet, a literary critic, a dramatist, an editor, and a publisher. In 1910 and 1911, while still a college student, he wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” published in Poetry magazine, and other poems that are landmarks in the history of modern literature. Eliot’s most notable works include The Waste Land (1922), Four Quartets (1943), and the play Murder in the Cathedral (1935). Eliot’s awards and honors include the British Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature. His play The Cocktail Party won the 1950 Tony Award for Best Play. In 1964, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats was famously adapted in 1981 into the musical Cats, which won seven Tony Awards. Despite his enduring popularity, Eliot and his work have been criticized as having prejudiced views, particularly anti-Semitism.

T.S. Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot) was born September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri. He was educated at Smith Academy in St. Louis (1898–1905); Milton Academy in Massachusetts (1905–1906); Harvard University (BA, June 1909; MA, February 1911; PhD courses, October 1911–May 1914); University of Paris-Sorbonne (October 1910–June 1911); and Merton College, Oxford University (October 1914–May 1915). He devoted a further year (1915–1916) to a doctoral dissertation on the philosophy of F.H. Bradley, eventually published in 1964.

In 1927, T.S. Eliot became a British citizen. In 1915, he married his first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood (Vivienne Eliot). The marriage was thought to have influenced Eliot’s bleak masterpiece The Waste Land. After 1933, Vivienne suffered from mental illness, and the two lived separately until she died in 1947. In 1957, at the age of 68, Eliot married Esmé Valerie Fletcher (Valerie Eliot), his secretary at Faber & Faber since 1950—she was almost 40 years his junior. Valerie Eliot preserved her husband’s literary legacy until she passed away in 2012 at the age of 86.

Eliot was almost as renowned a literary critic as he was a poet. From 1916 through 1921, he contributed approximately 100 reviews and articles to various periodicals. He also made significant contributions as an editor and a publisher. From 1922 to 1939, Eliot edited a major journal, the Criterion, and from 1925 to 1965, he was an editor and a director in the publishing house of Faber & Faber.

Several of Eliot’s earliest poems were published first in association with the college literary magazine the Harvard Advocate. At least one of Eliot’s lifelong friendships, that with fellow poet Conrad Aiken, was formed in this nursery of writers and poets.

Eliot’s career as a poet can be reasonably organized into three periods—the first coincided with his studies in Boston and Paris, culminating in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in 1911. The second coincided with World War I and the financial and marital stress of his early years in London, culminating in The Waste Land in 1922. The third coincided with Eliot’s angst at the economic depression and the rise of Nazism, culminating in the wartime Four Quartets in 1943. The poems of the first period were preceded by only a few exercises published in school magazines, but in 1910 and 1911, he wrote four poems that introduced themes to which, with variation and development, he returned time and again: “Portrait of a Lady,” “Preludes,” “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” 

Between the poems of 1910–1911 and The Waste Land in 1922, Eliot lived through several experiences crucial in understanding his development as a poet. His decision to put down roots or to discover roots in Europe stands, together with his first marriage to Vivienne Eliot and his conversion to Anglo-Catholicism, as the most important of his life. His Harvard friend Aiken, who had met Ezra Pound and showed him a copy of “Prufrock,” preceded Eliot in London. He called on Pound September 22, 1914, and Pound immediately adopted Eliot as a cause, promoting his poetry and introducing him to William Butler Yeats and other artists. 

Both T.S. Eliot and his mentor Ezra Pound espoused biased and harmful views in their poetry; Pound was a known fascist, and Eliot’s poetry contains anti-Semitic language. Critics including Anthony Julius have read Eliot and his work as degrading of Jewish people and culture, citing “Gerontion” and Eliot’s lectures as primary sources. 

In 1915, Pound arranged for the publication of “Prufrock” in Poetry magazine. In 1917, Pound facilitated the publication by Egoist Press of Prufrock and Other Observations. He continued to play a central role in Eliot’s life and work through the early 1920s. Pound influenced the form and content of Eliot’s next group of poems, the quatrains in Poems (1919). More famously, he changed the shape of The Waste Land by urging Eliot to cut several long passages.

T.S. Eliot died in 1965.

Poems by T. S. Eliot
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Bibliography

POETRY

  • Prufrock, and Other Observations (contains 11 poems and a prose piece, Hysteria; the title poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, was first published in Poetry, June, 1915; five other poems were originally published in Catholic Anthology, edited by Ezra Pound, 1915), The Egoist (London), 1917.
  • Poems by T. S. Eliot, Hogarth, 1919.
  • Ara Vus Prec (includes Poems by T. S. Eliot, above), Ovid Press (London), 1920, published in America as Poems, Knopf, 1920.
  • The Waste Land (first published in Criterion, first issue, October, 1922), Boni & Liveright, 1922.
  • Poems, 1909-1925 (contains all works cited above and The Hollow Men; earlier drafts and sections of "The Hollow Men" appeared in Chapbook, Commerce, Criterion, and Dial, 1924-25), Faber, 1925.
  • Journey of the Magi (one of the "Ariel Poems"), Faber, 1927.
  • Animula (one of the "Ariel Poems"), Faber, 1929.
  • Ash-Wednesday (first 3 parts originally published in French, American, and English magazines, respectively; Part 2, first published as Salutation in Saturday Review of Literature, was intended as another of the "Ariel Poems" and as a complement to Journey of the Magi the publisher also intended to issue this part separately as a Christmas card), Putnam, 1930.
  • Marina (one of the "Ariel Poems"), Faber, 1930.
  • Triumphal March, Faber, 1931.
  • The Waste Land, and Other Poems, Harcourt, 1934.
  • Words for Music, [Bryn Mawr], 1935.
  • Collected Poems, 1909-1935, Harcourt, 1936.
  • A Song for Simeon (written in the 1920 's; one of the "Ariel Poems"), Faber, 1938.
  • (With Geoffrey Faber, Frank Morley, and John Hayward) Noctes Binanianae(limited edition of 25 copies for the authors and friends; never reprinted), privately printed (London), 1939.
  • Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, Harcourt, 1939.
  • East Coker, Faber, 1940.
  • Burnt Norton, Faber, 1941.
  • The Dry Salvages, Faber, 1941.
  • Later Poems, 1925-1935, Faber 1941.
  • Little Gidding, Faber, 1942.
  • Four Quartets (consists of Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding), Harcourt, 1943.
  • A Practical Possum, Harvard Printing Office, 1947.
  • Selected Poems, Penguin, 1948, Harcourt, 1967.
  • The Undergraduate Poems, Harvard Advocate (unauthorized reprint of poems originally published in the Advocate), 1949.
  • Poems Written in Early Youth, privately printed by Bonniers (Stockholm), 1950, new edition prepared by Valerie Eliot and John Hayward, Farrar, Straus, 1967.
  • The Cultivation of Christmas Trees (one of the "Ariel Poems"), Faber, 1954, Farrar, Straus, 1956.
  • Collected Poems, 1909-1962, Harcourt, 1963.
  • The Waste Land: A Facsimile of the Original Drafts, Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound, edited and with introduction by Valerie Eliot, Harcourt, 1971.
  • Inventions of the March Hare: Poems, 1909-1917, edited by Christopher Ricks, Harcourt, 1997.
  • Eliot: Poems and Prose (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets), edited by Peter Washington, Random House, 1998.
  • Painted Shadow: The Life of Vivienne Eliot, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2002.
  • The Poems of T. S. Eliot: Collected and Uncollected Poems (Volume 1), Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015.
  • The Poems of T. S. Eliot: Practical Cats and Further Verses (Volume 2), Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015.

Poetry also represented in anthologies.

PLAYS

  • Fragment of a Prologue, [London], 1926.
  • Fragment of the Agon, [London], 1927.
  • Sweeney Agonistes: Fragments of an Aristophanic Melodrama (provisionally titled Wanna Go Home, Baby? during composition; consists of two fragments cited above; first produced in New York at Cherry Lane Theater, March 2, 1952), Faber, 1932.
  • The Rock: A Pageant Play (a revue with scenario by E. Martin Browne and music by Martin Shaw; first produced in London at Sadler Wells Theatre, May 9, 1934), Faber, 1934.
  • Murder in the Cathedral (provisionally titled Fear in the Way during composition; first produced in an abbreviated form for the Canterbury Festival in the Chapter House of Canterbury Cathedral, June, 1935; produced in London at Mercury Theatre, November 1, 1935; first produced in America at Yale University, January, 1936; first produced in New York at Manhattan Theater, March 20, 1936), Harcourt, 1935.
  • The Family Reunion (often cited as a rewriting of the unfinished Sweeney Agonistes; first produced in London at Westminster Theatre, March 21, 1939; produced in New York at Phoenix Theater, October 20, 1958), Harcourt, 1939.
  • The Cocktail Party (provisionally titled One-Eyed Riley during composition; first produced for the Edinburgh Festival, Scotland, August, 1949; produced in New York at Henry Miller's Theater, January 21, 1950), Harcourt, 1950.
  • The Confidential Clerk (first produced for the Edinburgh Festival, August, 1953; produced in London at Lyric Theatre, September 16, 1953; produced in New York at Morosco Theater, February 11, 1954), Harcourt, 1954.
  • The Elder Statesman (first produced for the Edinburgh Festival, August, 1958; produced in London at Cambridge Theatre, September 25, 1958), Farrar, Straus, 1959.
  • Collected Plays, Faber, 1962.

Plays also represented in anthologies.

PROSE

  • Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry (published anonymously) Knopf, 1917.
  • The Sacred Wood (essays on poetry and criticism), Methuen, 1920, 7th edition, 1950, Barnes & Noble, 1960.
  • Homage to John Dryden (three essays on 17th-century poetry), L. and V. Woolf at Hogarth Press, 1924, Doubleday, 1928.
  • Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca (an address), Oxford University Press, for the Shakespeare Association, 1927.
  • For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order, Faber, 1928, Doubleday, 1929.
  • Thoughts After Lambeth, (a criticism of the Report of the Lambeth Conference, 1930), Faber, 1931.
  • Charles Whibley: A Memoir, Oxford University Press, for the English Association, 1931.
  • Selected Essays, 1917-1932, Harcourt, 1932, 2nd edition published as Selected Essays, Harcourt, 1950, 3rd edition, Faber, 1951.
  • John Dryden, the Poet, the Dramatist, the Critic (three essays), T. & Elsa Holiday (New York), 1932.
  • The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England (the Charles Eliot Norton lectures), Harvard University Press, 1933, 2nd edition, Faber, 1964.
  • Elizabethan Essays (includes Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca), Faber, 1934, Haskell House, 1964.
  • After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy (the Page-Barbour lectures), Harcourt, 1934.
  • Essays, Ancient and Modern (first published in part as For Lancelot Andrewes), Harcourt, 1936.
  • The Idea of a Christian Society (three lectures), Faber, 1939, Harcourt, 1940.
  • Christianity and Culture (contains The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture), Harcourt, 1940.
  • Points of View (selected criticism), edited by John Hayward, Faber, 1941.
  • The Classics and the Man of Letters (an address), Oxford University Press, 1942.
  • The Music of Poetry (lecture), Jackson (Glasgow), 1942.
  • Reunion by Destruction: Reflections on a Scheme for Church Union in South India (an address), Pax House (London), 1943.
  • What Is a Classic? (an address), Faber, 1945.
  • Die Einheit der europaischen Kultur, Carl Havel, 1946.
  • On Poetry, [Concord], 1947.
  • A Sermon, [Cambridge], 1948.
  • From Poe to Valery (first published in Hudson Review, 1948), privately printed for friends by Harcourt, 1948.
  • Milton (lecture), Cumberlege (London), 1948.
  • Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (seven essays; a few copies erroneously stamped Notes Towards a Definition of Culture), Harcourt, 1949.
  • The Aims of Poetic Drama, Galleon, 1949.
  • The Value and Use of Cathedrals in England Today, [Chichester], 195?.
  • Poetry by T. S. Eliot: An NBC Radio Discussion, [Chicago], 1950.
  • Poetry and Drama (the Theodore Spencer lecture), Harvard University Press, 1951.
  • American Literature and the American Language (an address and an appendix entitled The Eliot Family and St. Louis, the latter prepared by the English Department at Washington University), Washington University Press, 1953.
  • The Three Voices of Poetry (lecture), Cambridge University Press, for the National Book League, 1953, Cambridge University Press (New York), 1954.
  • Selected Prose, edited by John Hayward, Penguin, 1953.
  • Religious Drama, House of Books (New York), 1954.
  • The Literature of Politics (lecture), foreword by Sir Anthony Eden, Conservative Political Centre, 1955.
  • The Frontiers of Criticism (lecture), University of Minnesota, 1956.
  • Essays on Elizabethan Drama (contains nine of the eleven essays originally published as Elizabethan Essays), Harcourt, 1956.
  • On Poetry and Poets (essays), Farrar, Straus, 1957.
  • Essays on Poetry and Criticism, introduction and notes in Japanese by Kazumi Yano, Shohakusha (Tokyo), 1959.
  • William Collin Brooks (an address), The Statist (London), 1959.
  • Geoffrey Faber, 1889-1961, Faber, 1961.
  • George Herbert, Longmans, Green, for the British Council and the National Book League, 1962.
  • Elizabethan Dramatists, Faber, 1963.
  • Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley (doctoral dissertation), Farrar, Straus, 1964.
  • To Criticize the Critic, and Other Writings (contains From Poe to Valery; American Literature and the American Language;The Literature of Politics; The Classics and the Man of Letters; Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry; and new essays), Farrar, Straus, 1965.

Prose also represented in anthologies.

OMNIBUS VOLUMES

  • The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950, Harcourt, 1952.
  • The Letters of T. S. Eliot, 6 volumes, Yale University Press.

CONTRIBUTOR

  • A Dialogue on Poetic Drama, in Of Dramatic Poesie (edition of an essay by John Dryden), Etchells & Macdonald (London), 1928.
  • The Place of Pater, in The Eighteen-Eighties: Essays by Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature (Eliot did not, however, hold the title F.R.S.L.), edited by Walter de la Mare, [Cambridge], 1930.
  • Donne in Our Time, in A Garland for John Donne, edited by Theodore Spencer, Harvard University Press, 1931.
  • Religion and Literature, in The Faith That Illuminates, edited by V. A. Demant, Centenary (London), 1935.
  • Byron, in From Anne to Victoria: Essays by Various Hands, edited by Bonamy Dobree, Cassell, 1937.
  • (Author of text) Britain at War (pictorial essay), Museum of Modern Art (New York), 1941.
  • Henry James, in The Shock of Recognition, edited by Edmund Wilson, Doubleday, 1943, reprinted as On Henry James, in The Question of Henry James, edited by F. W. Dupee, Wingate, 1947.
  • Peter Russell, editor, Examination of Ezra Pound, New Directions, 1950 (published in England as Ezra Pound: A Collection of Essays, Nevill, 1950).
  • Andrew Marvell, in Gedichte (an edition of Marvell's poems), Karl H. Henssel Verlag, 1962.
  • George Herbert, in British Writers and Their Work (periodical), number 4, University of Nebraska Press, 1964.

AUTHOR OF INTRODUCTION

  • Charlotte Chauncey Eliot, Savonarola (dramatic poem), R. Cobden Sanderson, 1926.
  • Seneca His Tenne Tragedies, Knopf, 1927, introduction reprinted as Seneca in Elizabethan Translation, in Eliot's Selected Essays.
  • Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (novel), Oxford University Press, 1928.
  • James B. Connolly, Fishermen of the Banks, Faber, 1928.
  • Edgar Ansel Mowrer, This American World, Faber, 1928.
  • Ezra Pound, Selected Poems, Faber, 1928.
  • Samuel Johnson, London, a Poem [and] The Vanity of Human Wishes, Etchells & Macdonald, 1930, introduction reprinted as Johnson's London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, in English Critical Essays: Twentieth Century, edited by Phyllis M. Jones, Oxford University Press, 1933.
  • G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire: Essays in Interpretation of Shakespeare's Sombre Tragedies, Oxford University Press, 1930.
  • Charles Baudelaire, Intimate Journals, translated by Christopher Isherwood, Random House, 1930, introduction reprinted as Baudelaire, in Eliot's Selected Essays.
  • Pascal's Pensees, translated by W. F. Trotter, Dutton, 1931, introduction reprinted as The Pensees of Pascal, in Eliot's Selected Essays.
  • Marianne Moore, Selected Poems, Macmillan, 1935.
  • Poems of Tennyson, Nelson, 1936, introduction reprinted as In Memoriam, in Eliot's Selected Essays.
  • Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (novel), Harcourt, 1937, 2nd edition, Faber, 1950.
  • (And compiler) A Choice of Kipling's Verse, Faber, 1941.
  • Charles-Louis Philippe, Bubu of Montparnasse, English translation by Laurence Vail and others, 2nd edition (not associated with first edition), Avalon, 1945.
  • Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, Putnam, 1952.
  • Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, New Directions, 1954.
  • Opada bhul (Oriya translation of some of Eliot's poems), P. C. Das, c. 1957.
  • Stanislaus Joyce, My Brother's Keeper, edited by Richard Ellmann, Viking, 1958.
  • Paul Valery, The Art of Poetry, translated by Denise Folliot, Pantheon, 1958.
  • Ezra Pound Kabita (Oriya translation of Pound's Selected Poems), translated by Jnanindra Barma, P. C. Das, 1958.
  • Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Poems and Verse Plays, edited by Michael Hamburger, Pantheon, 1961.
  • David Jones, In Parenthesis (novel), Viking, 1961.
  • John Davidson: A Selection of His Poems, edited by Maurice Lindsay, Hutchinson, 1961.
  • (And editor) Introducing James Joyce (selected prose), Faber, 1962.

Also author, between 1930 and 1941, of introductions to books of poems by Harry Crosby and Abraham Cowley; author, prior to 1952, of introduction to an edition of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

OTHER

  • (Translator) St. John Perse (pseudonym of Alexis Saint-Leger Leger) Anabasis (poem; published in a bilingual edition with the original French), Faber, 1930, revised edition, Harcourt, 1949.
  • (With George Hoellering) Murder in the Cathedral (screenplay based on Eliot's play), Harcourt, 1952.
  • The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922, Harcourt, 1988.
  • Mr. Mistoffelees; with Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer, Faber, 1990, Harcourt, 1991.
  • The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry: The Clark Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1926, and the Turnbull Lectures at the Johns Hopkins University, 1933, Harcourt Brace (New York, NY), 1994.

Also lyricist for songs "For An Old Man," [New York], 1951, and "The Greater Light," [London], released in 1956, with music by David Diamond and Martine Shaw. A complete run of Eliot's periodical, Criterion (1922-1939), was published by Barnes & Noble, 1967. Also author under pseudonyms Charles Augustus Conybeare, Reverend Charles James Grimble, Gus Krutzch, Muriel A. Schwartz, J. A. D. Spence, and Helen B. Trundlett. Editor of the Harvard Advocate, 1909-1910. Member of the editorial boards of New English Weekly, Inventario, Christian News-Letter, and other periodicals. Contributor to periodicals.