T S Eliot: a biographical sketch

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in 1888 in St Louis, Missouri, in the USA, of an old New England family. He was educated at Harvard, gaining a profound knowledge of European philosophy and literature, and writing much of his early poetry. He also studied oriental religions and learned Sanskrit. He developed these studies further during a European visit in 1910-11, chiefly in Paris, where for a time he considered settling and writing in French. He returned to Harvard for graduate work in philosophy, and was then able to return to Europe on a Travelling Fellowship to study at Merton College, Oxford, spending time first in London. There he met, among others, Ezra Pound, to whom he showed poems, including 'Prufrock' and 'Portrait of a Lady'. Pound became an enthusiastic promoter of Eliot's work. It was largely due to him that much of it was in print by the end of 1915, and Eliot's first volume, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917.

While still at Merton he met Vivien Haigh-Wood. The fascination was mutual, and they married in June 1915, but without any family consultation. Eliot completed his doctoral thesis (on the philosophy of F.H. Bradley) but had decided against an academic career in America. Instead he and Vivien settled in London, and he earned a living by school-mastering for a while, and by book-reviewing and occasional lecturing. Then, in March 1917, he was employed by Lloyds Bank, and worked there for eight years. During this time he also obtained editorial work, first with The Egoist and later with the very influential journal The Criterion. In 1925, Geoffrey Faber invited him onto the Board of the newly-established publishing firm of Faber and Gwyer (later Faber and Faber) where he became a dominant influence on the English literary scene.

The Eliots' marriage was, almost from the start, unhappy, beset by ill-health, and characterized by temperamental incompatibility. Eventually, in 1933, Eliot insisted upon a formal separation, although Vivien could never be brought to accept it. Her difficulties, both mental and physical, increased, and she died in a secure hospital in 1947. Eliot's sense of responsibility for this outcome, and of the irrevocability of choice, remained with him for life, and prevented him too from being able to become wholly committed to his lifelong American companion, Emily Hale.

Throughout these years he continued to produce poetry of significance. Poems, 1920 was followed in 1922 by his first large-scale work, 'The Waste Land', a hugely influential poem reflecting the desolation of a culture without centre or beliefs. The poems that followed, 'The Hollow Men', 1925, 'Ash Wednesday', 1930, and the 'Ariel' poems, culminate in the 'Four Quartets' written between 1935 and 1942. Increasingly they reflect a religious position, seeking:

'' to apprehend The point of intersection of the timeless With time.''

Eliot had been baptized and confirmed into the Church of England in 1927.

In the 1930s he began to seek a wider audience by writing plays. Murder in the Cathedral in 1935 was followed by The Family Reunion in 1939, and three further plays, The Cocktail Party, The Confidential Clerk and The Elder Statesman subsequently. He had indeed become himself the 'Elder Statesman' of letters. In 1948 he was awarded both the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The last of his plays reflects a new-found happiness. His later years were characterized not only by worldwide celebrity, but also the fulfilment that came from his marriage to Valerie Fletcher in 1957, and lasting until his death in 1965.

"The great question for any Eliot biographer is how could any singular person create such a huge body of work that seems to belong to us all".