T. S. Eliot
Born	Thomas Stearns Eliot 26 September 1888(1888-09-26) St. Louis, Missouri, United States
Died	4 January 1965 (aged 76) London, England
Occupation	Poet, Dramatist, Literary critic
Nationality	Born American, became a British subject in 1927
Writing period	1915-1965
Literary movement	Modernism
Notable award(s)	Nobel Prize in Literature 1948
Influences Homer, Virgil, The Bible, Dante, Shakespeare and Early Modern English Theatre, Dr. Johnson, Arnold, Laforgue, Yeats, Donne, Baudelaire, Conrad, Tennyson, Frazer, Hulme, Pound
Influenced Pound, Yeats, Crane,[1] Stevens, Moore, Empson, Auden, MacNeice, Hughes, Hill, Heaney,[2] Dylan[3]
Signature

Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (26 September 1888–4 January 1965), was a poet, dramatist, and literary critic. Events 46 BC - Julius Caesar dedicates a Year 1888 ( MDCCCLXXXVIII) was a Leap year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Missouri ( or) is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Events 46 BC - Titus Labienus defeats Julius Caesar in the Battle of Ruspina. Year 1965 ( MCMLXV) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar of the 1965 Gregorian calendar. London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom. England is a Country which is part of the United Kingdom. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population whilst its mainland Employment is a Contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. Nationality is a relationship between a Person and their State of Origin, Culture, association Affiliation and/or Loyalty The United States of America —commonly referred to as the In British nationality law, the term British subject has at different times had different meanings This is a list of modern literary movements: that is movements after the Renaissance. Modernist poetry in English is generally considered to have emerged in the early years of the 20th century with the appearance of the Imagists. The Nobel Prize in Literature (Nobelpriset i litteratur is awarded annually since 1901 to an author from any country who has in the words from the will of Alfred Homer ( Ancient Greek:, Homēros) is a legendary ancient Greek epic Poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Publius Vergilius Maro ( October 15, 70 BCE &ndash September 21, 19 BCE later called Virgilius, and known in English as Virgil or Etymology According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word bible is from Latin biblia, traced from the same word through Medieval Latin and Late Latin William Shakespeare ( baptised English Renaissance theatre is English drama written between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642. Samuel Johnson (often referred to as Dr Johnson) (18 September Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 &ndash 15 April 1888 was an English Poet, and Cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools Jules Laforgue (French ʒyl laˈfɔʀg ( Montevideo, 16 August 1860 – Paris, 20 August 1887) was a French John Donne (pronounced like done, dʌn 1572 – 31 March 1631 was a Jacobean poet preacher and a major representative of the Metaphysical poets Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924 was a Polish-born English novelist Alfred Tennyson 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892 was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom and remains one of the most popular English poets Thomas Ernest Hulme ( 16 September 1883 &ndash 28 September 1917) was an English writer who during his informal tenure from 1909 as critic Ezra Weston Loomis Pound ( Hailey, Idaho Territory, United States October 30 1885 – Venice, Italy November 1 1972 was an American Expatriate Ezra Weston Loomis Pound ( Hailey, Idaho Territory, United States October 30 1885 – Venice, Italy November 1 1972 was an American Expatriate Harold Hart Crane ( July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) was an American Poet. Wallace Stevens ( October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was a major American Modernist Poet. Marianne Moore ( November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was a Modernist American Poet and Writer Sir William Empson ( 27 September 1906 – 15 April 1984) was an English Literary critic Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973 ˈwɪstən ˈhjuː ˈɔːdən who signed his works W Frederick Louis MacNeice ( September 12 Edward James Hughes OM ( 17 August 1930 &ndash 28 October 1998) was an English Poet and children's For the British aeronautical engineer and professor see Geoffrey T Bob Dylan (born Robert Zimmerman, May 24 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota) is an American singer-songwriter author poet and painter who has been a major The Order of Merit is a British and Commonwealth Order bestowed by the Monarch. Events 46 BC - Julius Caesar dedicates a Year 1888 ( MDCCCLXXXVIII) was a Leap year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Events 46 BC - Titus Labienus defeats Julius Caesar in the Battle of Ruspina. Year 1965 ( MCMLXV) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar of the 1965 Gregorian calendar. A poet is a person who writes Poetry. Etymology From the Ancient greek: ποιέω, poieō: "I make or compose" A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or Drama. Literary criticism is the study discussion evaluation and interpretation of Literature. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. The Nobel Prize in Literature (Nobelpriset i litteratur is awarded annually since 1901 to an author from any country who has in the words from the will of Alfred He wrote the poems The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets; the plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party; and the essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent". The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock is the 1915 poem that marked the start of T The Waste Land ( 1922) is a highly influential 434-line modernist poem by T The Hollow Men (1925 is a major poem by T S Eliot, a Nobel Prize winning modernist poet This article is about a poem by T S Eliot For other uses of this term see Ash Wednesday (disambiguation. Four Quartets is the name given to four related poems by T S Eliot, collected and republished in book form in 1943 Murder in the Cathedral is a Poetic Drama by T S Eliot that portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket The Cocktail Party is a play by T S Eliot. Elements of the play are based on Alcestis, by the Ancient Greek playwright Euripides "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919 is an essay written by poet and literary theorist T Eliot was born in the United States, moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25), and became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located In British nationality law, the term British subject has at different times had different meanings

Life

Early life and education

Eliot was born into the prominent Eliot family of St. Louis, Missouri. There are several Eliot families of note - depending on the context His father, Henry Ware Eliot (1843–1919), was a successful businessman, president and treasurer of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St. Henry Ware Eliot ( November 25, 1843 &ndash January 7, 1919) was an American Industrialist and Philanthropist who lived Louis; his mother, born Charlotte Champe Stearns (1843–1929), wrote poems and was also a social worker. Charlotte Champe Stearns (1843–1929 was a social worker a poet and the mother of T Eliot was the last of six surviving children; his parents were both 44 years old when he was born. His four sisters were between eleven and nineteen years older than him; his brother was eight years older. Known to family and friends as Tom, he was the namesake of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Stearns.

From 1898 to 1905, Eliot was a day student at Smith Academy, a preparatory school for Washington University. Mary Institute and St Louis Country Day School or " MICDS " is a secular co-educational private school for about 1200 students in grades JK-12 which are separated At the academy, Eliot studied Latin, Greek, French, and German. Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. Upon graduation, he could have gone to Harvard University, but his parents sent him to Milton Academy (in Milton, Massachusetts, near Boston) for a preparatory year. Milton Academy is a private, preparatory, Coeducational boarding and Day school in Milton Massachusetts. Milton is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States and part of the Greater Boston area There he met Scofield Thayer, who would later publish The Waste Land. Scofield Thayer ( 12 December 1889 &mdash 1982 was an American Poet and Publisher, best known for his art collection now at the The Waste Land ( 1922) is a highly influential 434-line modernist poem by T He studied at Harvard, where he earned a B.A., from 1906 to 1909. A bachelor's degree is usually an Undergraduate Academic degree awarded for a course or major that generally lasts for three four or in some cases and During this time, he read Arthur Symons's The Symbolist Movement in Literature, where, by his own admission, he first came across Laforgue, Rimbaud, and Verlaine. Arthur William Symons ( 28 February 1865 &ndash 22 January 1945) was a British Poet, Critic and Magazine editor Arthur Symons 's The Symbolist Movement in Literature, first published in 1899, and with additional material in 1919, is largely credited with bringing French Jules Laforgue (French ʒyl laˈfɔʀg ( Montevideo, 16 August 1860 – Paris, 20 August 1887) was a French "Rimbaud" redirects here For other uses see Rimbaud (disambiguation Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (ræm'boʊ or in French aʁtyʁ Paul-Marie Verlaine (vɛʁˈlɛn March 30, 1844 &ndash January 8, 1896) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist ^[4] The Harvard Advocate published some of his poems, and he became lifelong friends with Conrad Aiken. The Harvard Advocate, the premier Literary magazine of Harvard College, is the oldest continuously published college literary magazine in the United States Conrad Potter Aiken (August 5 1889 &ndash August 17 1973 was a Pulitzer Prize -winning American novelist and poet born in Savannah Georgia, whose work includes The next year, he earned a master's degree at Harvard. In the 1910–1911 school year, Eliot lived in Paris, studying at the Sorbonne and touring the continent. Paris (ˈpærɨs in English; in French) is the Capital of France and the country's largest city The historic University of Paris (Université de Paris first appeared in the second half of the 13th century

Returning to Harvard in 1911 as a doctoral student in philosophy, Eliot studied the writings of F. H. Bradley, Buddhism and Indic philology (learning Sanskrit and Pāli to read some of the religious texts). Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language Francis Herbert Bradley ( 30 January, 1846 &ndash 18 September, 1924) was a British idealist Philosopher. Buddhism is a family of beliefs and practices See Comparative linguistics for the narrower field of "comparative philology" Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical Pali ( ISO 15919 / ALA-LC: Pāḷi is a Middle Indo-Aryan language or Prakrit of India. ^[5] He was awarded a scholarship to attend Merton College, Oxford, in 1914, and, before settling there, he visited Marburg, Germany, where he planned to take a summer program in philosophy. See also Wardens of Merton College Oxford. Merton College is also the name of a college in the London Borough of Merton. The University of Oxford (informally "Oxford University" or simply "Oxford" located in the city of Oxford, Oxfordshire, England is the Marburg is a city in Hesse, Germany, on the River Lahn. It is the main town of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. When the First World War broke out, however, he went to London and then to Oxford. World War I (abbreviated WWI; also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom. In a letter to Aiken late in December 1914, Eliot, aged 26, wrote "I am very dependent upon women (I mean female society)" and then added a complaint that he was still a virgin. ^[6] Less than four months later, he was introduced by Thayer, then also at Oxford, to Cambridge governess Vivienne Haigh-Wood. The city of Cambridge (ˈkeɪmbrɪdʒ is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England ^[7] Eliot was not happy at Merton and declined a second year there. Instead, on 26 June 1915, he married Vivienne in a register office. Events 363 - Roman Emperor Julian is killed during the retreat from the Sassanid Empire. Year 1915 ( MCMXV) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year In England and Wales The Register Office is primarily the local office for the registration of births deaths and marriages (BD&M and for the conducting of civil marriages After a short visit, alone, to the U. S. to see his family, he returned to London and took a few teaching jobs such as lecturing at Birkbeck College, University of London. Birkbeck University of London, sometimes referred to by its former (and still legal name Birkbeck College or by the abbreviation BBK, is a constituent college The University of London is a university based primarily in London, England, UK. He continued to work on his dissertation and, in the spring of 1916, sent it to Harvard, which accepted it. Because he did not appear in person to defend his dissertation, however, he was not awarded his PhD. (In 1964, the dissertation was published as Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley. Francis Herbert Bradley ( 30 January, 1846 &ndash 18 September, 1924) was a British idealist Philosopher. ) During Eliot's university career, he studied with George Santayana, Irving Babbitt, Henri Bergson, C. R. Lanman, Josiah Royce, Bertrand Russell, and Harold Joachim. George Santayana ( December 16, 1863, Madrid &ndash September 26, 1952, Rome) was a Philosopher, Essayist Irving Babbitt ( August 2, 1865 &ndash July 15, 1933) was an American academic and literary critic, noted for his founding Charles Rockwell Lanman ( July 8 1850 &ndash February 20 1941) was an American scholar of the Sanskrit language. Josiah Royce ( November 20, 1855, Grass Valley California. &ndash September 14, 1916, Cambridge Massachusetts) was an Bertrand Arthur William Russell 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970 was a British Philosopher, Historian This page is not about the American art critic of the same name Harold Henry Joachim ( May 28, 1868 - July 30, 1938

Bertrand Russell took an interest in Vivien (the spelling she preferred^[8]) while the newlyweds stayed in his flat. Some scholars have suggested that Vivien and Russell had an affair (see Carole Seymour-Jones, Painted Shadow), but these allegations have never been confirmed. Eliot, in a private paper, written in his sixties, confessed: "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 Pound) that she would save the poet by keeping him in England. Ezra Weston Loomis Pound ( Hailey, Idaho Territory, United States October 30 1885 – Venice, Italy November 1 1972 was an American Expatriate To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land. "^[9]

A plaque at SOAS's Faber Building, 24 Russell Square commemorating T S Eliot's years at Faber and Faber. The School of Oriental and African Studies (commonly abbreviated to " SOAS " pronounced (so as or (so az is a constituent college of the University of Russell Square is a large garden square in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden. Faber and Faber, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing

After leaving Merton, Eliot worked as a schoolteacher, most notably at Highgate School where he taught the young John Betjeman, and later at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe. Sir Roger Cholmeley's School at Highgate (Highgate School is a British Independent School in London England Sir John Betjeman, CBE ( 28 August 1906 &ndash 19 May 1984 was an English poet writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who See Royal Grammar School for the other schools with the name RGS To earn extra money, he wrote book reviews and lectured at evening extension courses. In 1917, he took a position at Lloyds Bank in London, where he worked on foreign accounts. Lloyds Bank Plc was a British Commercial bank which operated in England and Wales (and to a much lesser extent Scotland) from 1833 until its In August 1920, Eliot met James Joyce on a trip to Paris, accompanied by Wyndham Lewis. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 &ndash 13 January 1941 was an Irish expatriate writer widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the Percy Wyndham Lewis ( November 18, 1882 &ndash March 7, 1957) was an English painter and Author (he dropped After the meeting, Eliot said he found Joyce arrogant (Joyce doubted Eliot's ability as a poet at the time), but the two soon became friends with Eliot visiting Joyce whenever he was in Paris. ^[10] In 1925, Eliot left Lloyds to join the publishing firm Faber and Gwyer (later Faber and Faber), where he remained for the rest of his career, becoming a director of the firm. Faber and Faber, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing Faber and Faber, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing

Later life in England

In 1927, Eliot took two important steps in his self-definition. On June 29 he converted to Anglicanism and in November he dropped his American citizenship and became a British subject. Anglicanism is a tradition of Christian faith Churches in this tradition either have historical connections to the Church of England or have similar beliefs In British nationality law, the term British subject has at different times had different meanings In 1928, Eliot summarised his beliefs when he wrote in the preface to his book, For Lancelot Andrewes that "the general point of view [of the book's essays] may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion. For the works or study of works from classical antiquity see Classics Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to Monarchism is the advocacy of the establishment preservation or restoration of a Monarchy as a Form of government in a nation The terms Anglo-Catholic and Anglo-Catholicism (or sometimes possibly incorrectly High Church &mdashsee below describe people "

By 1932, Eliot had been contemplating a separation from his wife for some time. sEParation is an EP by Destroy Babylon, released on May 4th 2007 When Harvard University offered him the Charles Eliot Norton professorship for the 1932-1933 academic year, he accepted, leaving Vivien in England. Charles Eliot Norton, (November 16 1827 - October 21 1908 was a leading American author social critic and professor of art Upon his return in 1933, Eliot officially separated from Vivien. He avoided all but one meeting with his wife between his leaving for America in 1932 and her death in 1947. (Vivien died at Northumberland House, a mental hospital north of London, where she was committed in 1938, without ever having been visited by Eliot, who was still her husband. ^[11])

From 1946 to 1957, Eliot shared a flat with his friend, John Davy Hayward, who gathered and archived Eliot's papers and styled himself Keeper of the Eliot Archive. John Davy Hayward (born 2 February 1905, died 1965 was an English editor, Critic, Anthologist and Bibliophile. ^[12] He also collected Eliot's pre-"Prufrock" verse, commercially published after Eliot's death as Poems Written in Early Youth. When Eliot and Hayward separated their household in 1957, Hayward retained his collection of Eliot's papers, which he bequeathed to King's College, Cambridge in 1965. King's College Cambridge is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.

Eliot's second marriage was happy but short. On January 10, 1957, he married Esmé Valerie Fletcher, to whom he was introduced by Collin Brooks. Valerie Eliot née Esmé Valerie Fletcher (b August 17, 1926) is the surviving widow and second wife of the Nobel prize winning poet T Collin Brooks ( 22 December[[ 893]] – 1959 frequently known as "CB" was a British Journalist, Writer, and broadcaster. In sharp contrast to his first marriage, Eliot knew Miss Fletcher well, as she had been his secretary at Faber and Faber since August 1949. Faber and Faber, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing Like his marriage to Vivien, the wedding was kept a secret to preserve his privacy. The ceremony was held in a church at 6. 15 a. m. with virtually no one other than his wife's parents in attendance. Valerie was 37 years younger than her husband. Since Eliot's death she has dedicated her time to preserving his legacy; she has edited and annotated The Letters of T. S. Eliot and a facsimile of the draft of The Waste Land.

Eliot died of emphysema in London on January 4, 1965. Emphysema is a chronic obstructive Pulmonary disease ( COPD) formerly termed a chronic obstructive Lung disease (COLD For many years, he had health problems owing to the combination of London air and his heavy smoking, often being laid low with bronchitis or tachycardia. Bronchitis is an Inflammation of the Bronchi. More specifically it may refer to Acute bronchitis, caused by viruses or bacteria and lasting His body was cremated and, according to Eliot's wishes, the ashes taken to St Michael's Church in East Coker, the village from which Eliot's ancestors emigrated to America. East Coker is a village and Parish in Somerset, England, situated two Miles south of Yeovil in the South Somerset district There, a simple plaque commemorates him. On the second anniversary of his death, a large stone placed on the floor of Poets' Corner in London's Westminster Abbey was dedicated to Eliot. Poets’ Corner is the name traditionally given to a section of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey due to the number of Poets Playwrights and The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, which is almost always referred to by its original name of Westminster Abbey, is a large mainly Gothic church This commemoration contains his name, an indication that he had received the Order of Merit, dates, and a quotation from Four Quartets: "In my beginning is my end. The Order of Merit is a British and Commonwealth Order bestowed by the Monarch. In my end is my beginning. "

Eliot's poetry

For a poet of his stature, Eliot's poetic output was small. Eliot was aware of this early in his career. He wrote to J. H. Woods, one of his former Harvard professors, that "My reputation in London is built upon one small volume of verse, and is kept up by printing two or three more poems in a year. The only thing that matters is that these should be perfect in their kind, so that each should be an event. "^[13]

Typically, Eliot first published his poems in periodicals or in small books or pamphlets consisting of a single poem (e. g. , the Ariel poems) and then adding them to collections. His first collection was Prufrock and Other Observations (1917). In 1920 Eliot published more poems in Ara Vos Prec (London) and Poems: 1920 (New York). These had the same poems (in a different order) except that "Ode" in the British edition was replaced with "Hysteria" in the American edition. In 1925 Eliot collected The Waste Land and the poems in Prufrock and Poems into one volume and added "The Hollow Men" to form Poems: 1909–1925. From then on he updated this work (as Collected Poems). Exceptions are:

• Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)—a collection of light verse. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is a set of whimsical Poems by T
• Poems Written in Early Youth (posthumously published in 1967)—consisting mainly of poems published between 1907 and 1910 in The Harvard Advocate, the student-run literary magazine at Harvard University. The Harvard Advocate, the premier Literary magazine of Harvard College, is the oldest continuously published college literary magazine in the United States ^[14]
• Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917 (posthumously published in 1997)—poems, verse and drafts Eliot never intended to be published. Densely annotated by Christopher Ricks. Christopher Ricks (born 1933 is a British Literary critic and scholar

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Main article: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

In 1915, Ezra Pound, overseas editor of Poetry magazine, recommended to Harriet Monroe, the magazine's founder, that she publish "The Love Song of J. The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock is the 1915 poem that marked the start of T Ezra Weston Loomis Pound ( Hailey, Idaho Territory, United States October 30 1885 – Venice, Italy November 1 1972 was an American Expatriate Poetry, published in Chicago Illinois since 1912 is one of the leading monthly Poetry journals in the English-speaking world Harriet Monroe ( 12 December 1860 &ndash 26 September 1936) was an American editor scholar literary critic and patron of the arts Alfred Prufrock". Although Prufrock seems to be middle-aged, Eliot wrote most of the poem when he was only 22. Its now-famous opening lines, comparing the evening sky to "a patient etherised upon a table," were considered shocking and offensive, especially at a time when the poetry of the Georgians was hailed for its derivations of the 19th century Romantic Poets. Romanticism is a complex artistic literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the The poem then follows the conscious experience of a man, Prufrock (relayed in the "stream of consciousness" form indicative of the Modernists), lamenting his physical and intellectual inertia, the lost opportunities in his life and lack of spiritual progress, with the recurrent theme of carnal love unattained. Critical opinion is divided as to whether the narrator even leaves his own residence during the course of the narration. The locations described can be interpreted either as actual physical experiences, mental recollections or even as symbolic images from the sub-conscious mind, as, for example, in the refrain "In the room the women come and go. "

Its mainstream reception can be gauged from a review in The Times Literary Supplement on June 21, 1917: "The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. The Times Literary Supplement (or TLS, on the front page from 1969 is a weekly literary review published in London by News International They certainly have no relation to poetry…"^[15][16]

The poem's structure was heavily influenced by Eliot's extensive reading of Dante Alighieri (in the Italian). Italian ( or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people as a First language, primarily in Italy. References to Shakespeare's Hamlet and other literary works are present in the poem: this technique of allusion and quotation was developed in Eliot's subsequent poetry. William Shakespeare ( baptised Hamlet is a Tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601 An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference or representation of or to a well-known person place event literary work myth, or work of art

The Waste Land

T. S. Eliot

Main article: The Waste Land

In October 1922, Eliot published The Waste Land in The Criterion. The Waste Land ( 1922) is a highly influential 434-line modernist poem by T Composed during a period of personal difficulty for Eliot—his marriage was failing, and both he and Vivien suffered from disordered nerves —The Waste Land is often read as a representation of the disillusionment of the post-war generation. Even before The Waste Land had been published as a book (December 1922), Eliot distanced himself from the poem's vision of despair: "As for The Waste Land, that is a thing of the past so far as I am concerned and I am now feeling toward a new form and style" he wrote to Richard Aldington on November 15, 1922. Richard Aldington (born Edward Godfree Aldington July 8 1892 &ndash July 27 1962 was an English writer and poet. Despite the alleged obscurity of the poem—its slippage between satire and prophecy; its abrupt changes of speaker, location, and time; its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures--it has become a touchstone of modern literature, a poetic counterpart to a novel published in the same year, James Joyce's Ulysses. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 &ndash 13 January 1941 was an Irish expatriate writer widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920 Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month"; "I will show you fear in a handful of dust"; and "Shantih shantih shantih," the utterance in Sanskrit which closes the poem.

The Hollow Men

Main article: The Hollow Men

The Hollow Men appeared in 1926, and marked, for Edmund Wilson, 'the nadir of the phase of despair and desolation given such effective expression in "The Waste Land. The Hollow Men (1925 is a major poem by T S Eliot, a Nobel Prize winning modernist poet "'^[17] It is Eliot's major poem of the late twenties, and, like many of his others, its themes are overlapping and fragmentary; it is, however, widely recognized to be concerned with: post-War Europe under the Treaty of Versailles (which Eliot despised--compare 'Gerontion'); the difficulty of hope and religious conversion; and, as some critics argue, Eliot's failed marriage (Vivienne had been having an affair with Bertrand Russell). The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. Gerontion is a poem by T S Eliot that was first published in 1920 Bertrand Arthur William Russell 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970 was a British Philosopher, Historian ^[18]

Allen Tate, reviewing the 1926 volume, perceived a shift in Eliot’s method and noted that, ‘'The mythologies disappear altogether in The Hollow Men’--a striking claim for a poem as indebted to Dante as anything else in Eliot’s early work, to say little of the modern English mythology -- the ‘Old Guy [Fawkes]’ of the Gunpowder Plot--or the colonial and agrarian mythos of Conrad and Frazer, which, at least for reasons of textual history, echoes The Waste Land. John Orley Allen Tate ( November 19, 1899 - February 9, 1979) was an American Poet, essayist and social commentator and The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 or the Powder Treason, as it was known at the time was a failed Assassination attempt by a group of provincial English Agrarianism is a social and Political philosophy which stresses the viewpoint that the cultivation of plants or Farming leads to a fuller and happier life Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924 was a Polish-born English novelist The Waste Land ( 1922) is a highly influential 434-line modernist poem by T ^[19] The ‘continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity’ that is so characteristic of his mythical method remains in fine form. ^[20]

The Hollow Men contains some of Eliot's most famous lines, most notably its conclusion:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Ash Wednesday

Main article: Ash Wednesday (poem)

Ash Wednesday is the first long poem written by Eliot after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism. This article is about a poem by T S Eliot For other uses of this term see Ash Wednesday (disambiguation. The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England, the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Published in 1930, this poem deals with the struggle that ensues when one who has lacked faith in the past strives to move towards God. The year 1930 in literature involved some significant events and new books

Sometimes referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem", Ash Wednesday, with a base of Dante's Purgatorio, is richly but ambiguously allusive and deals with the aspiration to move from spiritual barrenness to hope for human salvation. The style is different from his poetry which predates his conversion. Ash Wednesday and the poems that followed had a more casual, melodic, and contemplative method.

Many critics were "particularly enthusiastic concerning Ash Wednesday",^[21] while in other quarters it was not well received. ^[22] Among many of the more secular literati its groundwork of orthodox Christianity was discomfiting. Edwin Muir maintained that "Ash Wednesday is one of the most moving poems he has written, and perhaps the most perfect. Edwin Muir ( 15 May 1887 &ndash 3 January, 1959) was an Orcadian poet novelist and noted translator born on a farm in Deerness "^[23]

Four Quartets

Main article: Four Quartets

Although many critics preferred his earlier work, Eliot and many other critics considered Four Quartets his masterpiece and it is the work which led to his receipt of the Nobel Prize. Four Quartets is the name given to four related poems by T S Eliot, collected and republished in book form in 1943 ^[22] The Four Quartets draws upon his knowledge of mysticism and philosophy. It consists of four long poems, published separately: Burnt Norton (1936), East Coker (1940), The Dry Salvages (1941) and Little Gidding (1942), each in five sections. Although they resist easy characterisation, each begins with a rumination on the geographical location of its title, and each meditates on the nature of time in some important respect—theological, historical, physical—and its relation to the human condition. Also, each is associated with one of the four classical elements: air, earth, water, and fire. Many ancient philosophies used a set of archetypal classical "elements" to explain patterns in Nature. They approach the same ideas in varying but overlapping ways, and are open to a diversity of interpretations.

Burnt Norton asks what it means to consider things that might have been. We see the shell of an abandoned house, and Eliot toys with the idea that all these "merely possible" realities are present together, but invisible to us: All the possible ways people might walk across a courtyard add up to a vast dance we can't see; children who aren't there are hiding in the bushes.

East Coker continues the examination of time and meaning, focusing in a famous passage on the nature of language and poetry. Out of darkness Eliot continues to reassert a solution ("I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope").

The Dry Salvages treats the element of water, via images of river and sea. It again strives to contain opposites ("…the past and future/Are conquered, and reconciled").

Little Gidding (the element of fire) is the most anthologized of the Quartets. Eliot's own experiences as an air raid warden in The Blitz power the poem, and he imagines meeting Dante during the German bombing. The Blitz was the sustained bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941 in World War II. The beginning of the Quartets ("Houses…/Are removed, destroyed") had become a violent everyday experience; this creates an animation, where for the first time he talks of Love—as the driving force behind all experience. From this background, the Quartets end with an affirmation of Julian of Norwich "all shall be well and/All manner of thing shall be well". Julian of Norwich (c November 8, 1342 – c 1416 is considered one of the greatest English mystics Little is known of her life aside

The Four Quartets cannot be understood without reference to Christian thought, traditions, and history. Eliot draws upon the theology, art, symbolism and language of such figures as Dante, St. John of the Cross and Julian of Norwich. For another saint who lived around the same time and area see John of Avila. The "deeper communion" sought in East Coker, the "hints" and whispers of children, the sickness that must grow worse in order to find healing, and the exploration which inevitably leads us home all point to the pilgrim's path along the road of sanctification.

Eliot's plays

With the important exception of his magnum opus, Four Quartets, much of Eliot's creative energies after Ash Wednesday were spent in writing plays in verse, mostly comedies or plays with redemptive endings. Magnum opus (sometimes Opus magnum, plural magna opera) from the Latin meaning great work, refers to the best the greatest He was long a critic and admirer of Elizabethan and Jacobean verse drama (witness his allusions to Webster, Middleton, Shakespeare and Kyd in The Waste Land. John Webster (c 1580 &ndash c 1634 was an English Jacobean Dramatist, and a late contemporary of William Shakespeare. Thomas Middleton (1580 &ndash 1627 was an English Jacobean playwright and Poet. William Shakespeare ( baptised Thomas Kyd ( 3 November 1558 – 16 July 1594) was an English Dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy ) In a 1933 lecture he said: "Every poet would like, I fancy, to be able to think that he had some direct social utility. . . . He would like to be something of a popular entertainer, and be able to think his own thoughts behind a tragic or a comic mask. He would like to convey the pleasures of poetry, not only to a larger audience, but to larger groups of people collectively; and the theatre is the best place in which to do it. "^[24]

After writing The Waste Land (1922) Eliot wrote that he was "now feeling toward a new form and style. " One item he had in mind was writing a play in verse with a jazz tempo with a character that appeared in a number of his poems, Sweeney. Jazz is an American Musical art form which originated in the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States Eliot did not finish it. He did publish two pieces of what he had separately. The two, "Fragment of a Prologue" (1926) and "Fragment of an Agon" (1927) were published together in 1932 as Sweeney Agonistes. Prologue ( Greek πρόλογος prologos, from προ~ pro~ - fore~, and lógos word) or prolog, is a prefatory AGON is a series of Episodic Adventure games for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows by Private Moon Studios. The word Agonistes, found as an epithet following a person's name means 'the struggler' or 'the combatant' Although noted that this was not intended to be a one-act play, it is sometimes performed as one. ^[25]

In 1934 a pageant play called The Rock that Eliot authored was performed. This was a benefit for churches in the Diocese of London. Much of the work was a collaborative effort and Eliot only accepted authorship of one scene and the choruses. ^[26] The pageant would have a sympathetic audience but one largely consisting of the common churchman, a new audience for Eliot who had to modify his style, often called "erudite. "

George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, who was instrumental in getting Eliot to work as writer with producer E. George Kennedy Allen Bell ( February 4, 1883 – October 3, 1958) was an Anglican Theologian, Dean of Canterbury See also List of Bishops of Chichester and precursor offices The Bishop of Chichester is the Ordinary of the Church of England Martin Browne in producing the pageant play The Rock asked Eliot to write another play for the Canterbury Festival in 1935. This play, Murder in the Cathedral, was more under Eliot's control. Murder in the Cathedral is a Poetic Drama by T S Eliot that portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket

Murder in the Cathedral is about the death of Thomas Becket. Murder in the Cathedral is a Poetic Drama by T S Eliot that portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket St Thomas Becket (c 1118 &ndash December 29, 1170) was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 to 1170 Eliot admitted being influenced by, among others, the works of 17th century preacher Lancelot Andrewes. Lancelot Andrewes (1555 – 25 September 1626) was an English clergyman and scholar who held high positions in the Church of England during the reigns Murder in the Cathedral has been a standard choice for Anglican and Roman Catholic curricula for many years.

Following his ecclesiastical plays Eliot worked on commercial plays for more general audiences. These were The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958). The Family Reunion is a play by Nobel Prize winning poet T S Eliot. The Cocktail Party is a play by T S Eliot. Elements of the play are based on Alcestis, by the Ancient Greek playwright Euripides The Confidential Clerk is a comic verse play by T S Eliot. Synopsis Sir Claude Mulhammer a wealthy entrepreneur decides to smuggle his illegitimate The Elder Statesman is a play in verse by T S Eliot first performed in 1958 and published in 1959

The dramatic works of Eliot are less well known than his poems.

Eliot as critic

Although best known as a poet, Eliot also made significant contributions to the field of literary criticism. In particular, Eliot strongly influenced the school of New Criticism. New Criticism was a dominant trend in English and American Literary criticism of the mid twentieth century from the 1920s to the early 1960s While somewhat self-deprecating and minimizing of his work as a critic—he once said his criticism was merely a “by-product” of his “private poetry-workshop”^[27]—Eliot is considered by some to be one of the greatest literary critics of the 20th century. The critic William Empson once said, "I do not know for certain how much of my own mind [Eliot] invented, let alone how much of it is a reaction against him or indeed a consequence of misreading him. Sir William Empson ( 27 September 1906 – 15 April 1984) was an English Literary critic He is a very penetrating influence, perhaps not unlike the east wind. "^[28]

In his critical essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,”^[29] Eliot argues that art must be understood not in a vacuum, but in the context of previous pieces of art: “In a peculiar sense [an artist or poet]… must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past. "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919 is an essay written by poet and literary theorist T ” This essay was one of the most important works of the school of New Criticism. Specifically, it introduced the idea that the value of one work of art must be viewed in the context of all previous work—a “simultaneous order” or works. ^[30] It has also been argued that "Tradition and the Individual Talent" served to keep out the public at large from engaging in literature (or having literature in engage in them): "T. S. Eliot’s insistence in essays such as 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (1917) that the young poet need only assimilate the (all-male) canon of established authors contributed to public definitions of literary modernism that would exclude mass culture. " Conversely, Eliot's work regarding music—particularly his article "Marie Lloyd"—may have actually helped lead to the idea that popular culture could be the subject of criticism. ^[31]

Also extremely important to New Criticism was the idea—as articulated in Eliot’s essay "Hamlet and His Problems”^[32]—of an “objective correlative,” which posits a connection among the words of the text and events, states of mind, and experiences. " Hamlet and His Problems " is a 1920 essay by T S Eliot which offers a critical reading of ''Hamlet''. An objective correlative is a literary term referring to a symbolic article used to provide explicit rather than implicit access to such traditionally inexplicable concepts as emotion This notion concedes that a poem means what it says, but suggests that there can be a non-subjective judgment based on different readers’ different—but perhaps corollary—interpretations of a work. ^[33]

More generally, New Critics took a cue from Eliot in regards to his “‘classical’ ideals and his religious thought; his attention to the poetry and drama of the early seventeenth century; his deprecation of the Romantics, especially Shelley; his proposition that good poems constitute ‘not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion; and his insistence that ‘poets…at present must be difficult. ’” ^[34]

Eliot’s essays were also a major factor in the revival of interest in the metaphysical poets. The metaphysical poets were a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century who shared an interest in metaphysical concerns and a common way of investigating them Eliot was particularly favorable to the metaphysical poets' ability to show experience as both psychological and sensual, while at the same time infusing this portrayal with—in Eliot's view—wit and uniqueness. Eliot’s essay “The Metaphysical Poets,” along with giving new significance and attention to metaphysical poetry, introduced his now well known definition of “unified sensibility,”^[35] which is considered by some to mean the same thing as the term "metaphysical. "^[36]

Some have argued that Eliot can be best understood as critic through his poetry--that one reflects the other and that Eliot has a unique perspective as a poet-critic. In his “Four Quartets,” a series of poems, is self-aware in a way that “open the poem up to modern critical movements in which understanding is made contingent on the perspective in which it is installed. Four Quartets is the name given to four related poems by T S Eliot, collected and republished in book form in 1943 ”^[37] Eliot’s self-examination through poetry reflects his belief in the objective correlative. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land^[38]—which at the time of its publication, many critics believed to be a joke or hoax^[39]—also can be better understood in light of his work as a critic. The Waste Land ( 1922) is a highly influential 434-line modernist poem by T Eliot had argued that a poet must write “programmatic criticism”—or the idea that a poet should write to advance his own interests than to advance “historical scholarship". Viewed from Eliot's own critical lens, The Waste Land likely shows his personal distaste for World War I rather than an objective historical understanding of it. ^[40]

Some have argued that late in his career, Eliot recanted much of his earlier work as a critic. However, this is disputed. At that time, Eliot stressed the importance of every poet creating his or her own unique personality through his work. ^[41]

Other works

In 1939, Eliot published a book of light verse, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats — "Old Possum" being a name Ezra Pound had bestowed upon him. Light verse is Poetry that attempts to be humorous Poems considered "light" are usually brief and can be on a frivolous or serious subject and often feature Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is a set of whimsical Poems by T This first edition had an illustration of the author on the cover. In 1954 the composer Alan Rawsthorne set six of the poems for speaker and orchestra, in a work entitled Practical Cats. Alan Rawsthorne (2 May 1905 &ndash 24 July 1971 was a British Composer. After Eliot's death, it became the basis of the West End and Broadway hit musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cats. West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London 's "Theatreland" Broadway theater, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 39 large professional theaters with 500 seats or more located Musical theatre is a form of Theatre combining Music, Songs spoken Dialogue and Dance. Andrew Lloyd Webber Baron Lloyd-Webber (born 22 March 1948 is a British Composer of Musical theatre, the elder son of William Lloyd Webber Cats is an award-winning musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T

In 1958 the Archbishop of Canterbury appointed Eliot to a commission which resulted in "The Revised Psalter" (1963). The Archbishop of Canterbury is the chief bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the A harsh critic of Eliot's, C. S. Lewis, was also a member of the commission but their antagonism turned into a friendship. Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963 ^[42]

Criticism of Eliot

Literature and literary criticism

Eliot's poetry was first criticized as not being poetry at all. Another criticism has been of his widespread interweaving of quotations from other authors into his work. "Notes on the Waste Land," which follows the poem, gives the source of many of these, but not all. This practice has been defended as a necessary salvaging of tradition in an age of fragmentation, and completely integral to the work, adding richness through unexpected juxtaposition. It has also been condemned as showing a lack of originality, and for plagiarism. Plagiarism is the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work The prominent critic F. W. Bateson published an essay called 'T. Frederick (Noel Wilse Bateson (1901-1978 was an English literary scholar and critic S. Eliot: The Poetry of Pseudo-Learning'. Eliot wrote in The Sacred Wood: "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. "

Canadian academic Robert Ian Scott pointed out that the title of The Waste Land and some of the images had previously appeared in the work of a minor Kentucky poet, Madison Cawein (1865–1914). Country to "Dominion of Canada" or "Canadian Federation" or anything else please read the Talk Page The Commonwealth of Kentucky ( is a state located in the East Central United States of America. Madison Cawein ( 23 March 1865 - 8 December 1914) was a poet from Louisville Kentucky whose poem "Waste Land" has been linked with Bevis Hillier compared Cawein's lines "… come and go/Around its ancient portico" with Eliot's "… come and go/talking of Michelangelo". Bevis Hillier (born March 28 1940) is an English Art historian, author and journalist Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime One of them by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all (This line actually appears in Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and not in The Waste Land. ) Cawein's "Waste Land" had appeared in the January 1913 issue of Chicago magazine Poetry (which contained an article by Ezra Pound on London poets). Chicago (ʃɪˈkɑːgoʊ is the largest City by population in the state of Illinois and the American Midwest of the United States. But scholars are continually finding new sources for Eliot's Waste Land, often in odd places.

Many famous fellow writers and critics have paid tribute to Eliot. According to the poet Ted Hughes, "Each year Eliot's presence reasserts itself at a deeper level, to an audience that is surprised to find itself more chastened, more astonished, more humble. Edward James Hughes OM ( 17 August 1930 &ndash 28 October 1998) was an English Poet and children's " Hugh Kenner commented, "He has been the most gifted and influential literary critic in English in the twentieth century. Hugh Kenner ( January 7, 1923 &ndash November 24, 2003) was a Canadian Literary Scholar, Critic Literary criticism is the study discussion evaluation and interpretation of Literature. " However, other writers have not supported this view. In one of his criticisms,Samuel Beckett suggests that Eliot's work belongs in what the reverse of "T. Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989 was an Irish Writer, Dramatist and poet Eliot" spells. ^[43]

C. S. Lewis, however, thought his literary criticism "superficial and unscholarly". Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963 In a 1935 letter to a mutual friend of theirs, Paul Elmer Moore, Lewis wrote that he considered the work of Eliot to be "a very great evil". ^[42] Although, in a letter to Eliot written in 1943, Lewis showed an admiration for Eliot along with his antagonism toward his views when he wrote: "I hope the fact that I find myself often contradicting you in print gives no offence; it is a kind of tribute to you—whenever I fall foul of some widespread contemporary view about literature I always seem to find that you have expressed it most clearly. One aims at the officers first in meeting an attack!"^[42]

Charges of anti-Semitism

Eliot has sometimes been charged with anti-Semitism. Antisemitism (alternatively spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism; also rarely known as judeophobia) is the Prejudice against or hostility Biographer Lyndall Gordon has noted that many in Eliot's milieu successfully eschewed such views. Lyndall Gordon is a South African academic known for her literary biographies. ^[44]

Public expressions

The poem "Gerontion" contains a depiction of a landlord referred to only as the "Jew [who] squats on the window sill. Gerontion is a poem by T S Eliot that was first published in 1920 PLEASE TAKE NOTE************ " Another much-quoted example is the poem, "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar", in which a character in the poem implicitly blames the Jews for the decline of Venice ("The rats are underneath the piles/ The Jew is underneath the lot"). Venice ( Italian: Venezia, Venetian: Venesia or Venexia) is a city in Northern Italy, the capital of the In "A Cooking Egg", Eliot writes, "The red-eyed scavengers are creeping/ From Kentish Town and Golder's Green" (Golders Green was a largely Jewish suburb of London). Golders Green is an area in the London Borough of Barnet in London, England. South San Jose (cropjpg||thumb|A suburban development in San Jose California.

In a series of lectures given at the University of Virginia in 1933 and later published under the title "After Strange Gods" (1934), Eliot said, regarding a homogeneity of culture (and implying a traditional Christian community), "What is still more important is unity of religious background, and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable. "^[45] The philosopher George Boas, who had previously been on friendly terms with Eliot, wrote to him that, "I can at least rid you of the company of one. George Boas ( 28 August, 1891 &ndash 17 March, 1980)was a Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. " Eliot did not reply. In later years Eliot disavowed the book, and refused to allow any part to be reprinted.

Eliot also wrote a letter to the Daily Mail in January 1932 which congratulated the paper for a series of laudatory articles on the rise of Mussolini. The Daily Mail is a British newspaper currently published in a tabloid format In The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) he says "…totalitarianism can retain the terms 'freedom' and 'democracy' and give them its own meaning: and its right to them is not so easily disproved as minds inflamed by passion suppose. Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a concept used to describe Political systems where a State regulates nearly every aspect of public and private Democracy is a form of government in which the supreme power is held completely by the people under a free electoral system " In the same book, written before World War II, he says of J. F. C. Fuller, who worked for the Policy Directorate in the British Union of Fascists:

Fuller… believes that Britain "must swim with the out-flowing tide of this great political change". World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including Major-General John Frederick Charles Fuller, CB, CBE, DSO, commonly J The British Union of Fascists (BUF was a Political party in the United Kingdom formed in 1932 by a Labour government minister and former MP From my point of view, General Fuller has as good a title to call himself a "believer in democracy" as anyone else. …I do not think I am unfair to [the report that a ban against married women Civil Servants should be removed because it embodied Nazism], in finding the implication that what is Nazi is wrong, and need not be discussed on its own merits. Nazism, which was a short name for National Socialism (Nationalsozialismus refers primarily to the Ideology and practices of the National Socialist German ^[46]

Protests against

One of the first and most famous protests against T. S. Eliot on the subject of anti-Semitism came in the form of a poem from the Anglo-Jewish writer and poet Emanuel Litvinoff,^[47] at an inaugural poetry reading for the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1951. Emanuel Litvinoff (born May 5, 1915) is a British writer and human rights campaigner and is one of the best known and highly regarded figures in Anglo-Jewish literature The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA is a Modern art centre on The Mall in London, England. Only a few years after the Holocaust, Eliot had republished lines originally written in the 1920s about 'money in furs' and the 'protozoic slime' of Bleistein's 'lustreless, protrusive eye' in his Selected Poems of 1948, angering Litvinoff. The Holocaust (from the Greek el ''ὁλόκαυστον'' (el-Latn holókauston holos, "completely" and kaustos, "burnt" also known as When the poet got up and announced his poem, entitled 'To T. S. Eliot', the event’s host, Sir Herbert Read, declared 'Oh Good, Tom's just come in’. Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC (1893&ndash1968 was an English anarchist Poet, and Critic of Literature and Litvinoff proceeded in evoking to the packed but silent room his work, which ended with the lines "Let your words/tread lightly on this earth of Europe/lest my people's bones protest". Many members of the audience were outraged; Litvinoff said "hell broke loose" and that no one supported him. One listener, the poet Stephen Spender, claiming to be as Jewish as Litvinoff, stood and called the poem an undeserved attack on Eliot. Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE, ( 28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English Poet, Novelist ^[47] However, Litvinoff says that Eliot was heard to mutter, 'It's a good poem'. ^[48]

Rebuttals

Leonard Woolf, husband of Virginia Woolf, who was himself Jewish and a friend of Eliot's, judged that Eliot was probably "slightly anti-Semitic in the sort of vague way which is not uncommon. Leonard Sidney Woolf ( November 25, 1880 &ndash August 14, 1969) was a noted British political theorist author publisher and civil servant (Adeline Virginia Woolf (née Stephen; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941 was an English Novelist and Essayist, regarded as one of the foremost He would have denied it quite genuinely. "^[49] Jewish friends such as Stephen Spender, Isaiah Berlin, Sidney Schiff, and Norbert Wiener claimed that they had no basis on which to believe that Eliot was anti-semitic.

In 2003, Professor Ronald Schuchard of Emory University published details of a previously unknown cache of letters from Eliot to Horace Kallen, which reveal that in the early 1940s Eliot was actively helping Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria to re-settle in Britain and America. Emory University is a Private university located in the metropolitan area of the city of Atlanta and in western unincorporated DeKalb County, Horace Meyer Kallen ( August 11, 1882 - February 16 1974) was a Jewish-American philosopher Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. Austria (Österreich ( officially the Republic of Austria (Republik Österreich In letters written after the war, Eliot also voiced support for modern Israel. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Israel topics. ^[50]

Recognition

Main article: Cultural depictions of T. S. Eliot

Formal recognition

• Order of Merit (awarded by King George VI (United Kingdom), 1948)
• Nobel Prize for Literature "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry" (Stockholm, 1948)
• Officier de la Legion d'Honneur (1951)
• Hanseatic Goethe Prize (Hamburg, 1955)
• Dante Medal (Florence, 1959)
• Commandeur de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres, (1960)
• Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964)
• 13 honorary doctorates (including Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, and Harvard)
• Two posthumous Tony Awards (1983) for his poems used in the musical Cats
• Eliot College of the University of Kent, England, named after him
• Celebrated on commemorative postage stamps
• Has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame

Bibliography

Poetry

• Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
  • The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
  • Portrait of a Lady (poem)
• Poems (1920)
  • Gerontion
  • Sweeney Among the Nightingales
• The Waste Land (1922)
• The Hollow Men (1925)
• Ariel Poems (1927-1954)
  • The Journey of the Magi (1927)
• Ash Wednesday (1930)
• Coriolan (1931)
• Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)
• The Marching Song of the Pollicle Dogs and Billy M'Caw: The Remarkable Parrot (1939) in The Queen's Book of the Red Cross
• Four Quartets (1945)

Plays

• Sweeney Agonistes (published in 1926, first performed in 1934)
• The Rock (1934)
• Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
• The Family Reunion (1939)
• The Cocktail Party (1949)
• The Confidential Clerk (1953)
• The Elder Statesman (first performed in 1958, published in 1959)

Nonfiction

• The Second-Order Mind (1920)
• Tradition and the Individual Talent (1920)
• The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920)
  • "Hamlet and His Problems"
• Homage to John Dryden (1924)
• Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca (1928)
• For Lancelot Andrewes (1928)
• Dante (1929)
• Selected Essays, 1917–1932 (1932)
• The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933)
• After Strange Gods (1934)
• Elizabethan Essays (1934)
• Essays Ancient and Modern (1936)
• The Idea of a Christian Society (1940)
• Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948)
• Poetry and Drama (1951)
• The Three Voices of Poetry (1954)
• The Frontiers of Criticism (1956)
• On Poetry and Poets (1957)

Posthumous publications

• To Criticize the Critic (1965)
• The Waste Land: Facsimile Edition (1974)
• Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917 (1996)

Further reading

Notes

External links

• Yale University Video Lecture on T. S. Eliot at Google Video
• Eliot's Grave
• T. S. Eliot's biographic sketch at Find A Grave
• Works by T. S. Eliot at Project Gutenberg
• T. S. Eliot reading Heart of Darkness (French)
• What the Thunder Said: T. S. Eliot
• T. S. Eliot at Faber and Faber
• T. S. Eliot Collection at Bartleby.com
• T. S. Eliot Society Home Page
• T. S. Eliot Hypertext Project
• Nobel prize
• Composition of The Waste Land
• Fascimile manuscript of Part III of The Waste Land
• The Eliot Prufrock page
• Bevis Hillier on Eliot and Cawein (pdf)
• Online concordance of Eliot poems
• Eliot family genealogy, including T. Find A Grave is a Website allowing its users to access maintain and expand an online Database of Burial records Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to Digitize, archive and distribute Cultural works S. Eliot
• (German) Time in Marburg, Germany
• Recordings of Eliot reading from "Prufrock" and The Waste Land
• T. S. Eliot's Gravesite
• Biography From T. S. Eliot Lives' and Legacies.
• T.S. Eliot Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin