T' S' Eliot

1
T. S. Eliot

• Ashley Fleming
• Sam Gilbert

2

• 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

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Life of Thomas Stearns Eliot

• Born- 26 Sept. 1888
• Died- 4 Jan. 1965
• His father was a businessman and his mother a
  poetess. He grew up in Boston and his family had
  roots with the first settlers there as well as in
  Missouri on his paternal side.
• Worked as an air-raid warden during the war, a
  schoolmaster, a bank clerk, a poet, a critic,
  assistant editor for The Egoist, editor of The
  Criterion, publisher with Faber and Faber, and
  professor of poetry at Harvard.

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Life (contd.)

• Moved to Great Britain where he became a British
  subject in 1927.
• While living in Britain he marrried Vivienne
  Haigh-Wood (1915), who died in 1945.
• He later remarried in 1957 to Valerie Fletcher
• He died of emphysema in London on January 4,
  1965. In his will he forbade an official
  biography.

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Education

• Smith Academy in St. Louis (grammar school)
• Milton Academy in Massachusetts (secondary
  school).
• By 1906 he was a freshman at Harvard
  University. Where he finished his bachelor's
  degree in only 3 years, was a grad. student in
  philosophy from 1910-1914
• Sorbonne in Paris for a year.

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Influences

• In 1927 he became a member of the Anglican Church
  and from this point on his poems took a more
  positive turn
• He was influenced by other writers such as
  Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Dante
• Ezra Pound who exposed Eliot to the Imagist
  Movement and also helped to edit and revise his
  works

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Influences (contd.)

• His experiences as an air raid warden during The
  Blitz, and post war Europe under the Treaty of
  Versailles which he strongly disagreed with
  (Gerontion)
• His knowledge of mysticism and philosophy

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• Poetry
• Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
• Preludes (1917)
• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
• 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

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Four Quartets (1945) edit 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) edit Nonfiction The Sacred
Wood Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920) The
Second-Order Mind (1920) "Tradition and the
Individual Talent" (1920) Homage to John Dryden
(1924) Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca
(1928) For Lancelot Andrewes (1928) Dante
(1929) Selected Essays, 19171932 (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) edit Posthumous
publications To Criticize the Critic (1965) The
Waste Land Facsimile Edition (1974) Inventions
of the March Hare Poems 1909-1917 (1996)
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) )
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edit Nonfiction The Sacred Wood Essays on
Poetry and Criticism (1920 The Second-Order Mind
(1920) "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
(1920) Homage to John Dryden (1924) Shakespeare
and the Stoicism of Seneca (1928) For Lancelot
Andrewes (1928) Dante (1929) Selected Essays,
19171932 (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)
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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)
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Awards and Honors

• Dial Award (1922)
• Nobel Prize (Literature, 1948)
• Order of Merit
• Legion dHonneur (1951)
• Hanseatic Goethe Prize (1955)
• Dante Medal (1959)
• Commandeur de lordre des Arts et des Lettres
  (1960)
• Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964)

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Biblography

• http//everything2.com/index.pl?nodeT.S.20Eliot
• http//www.bartleby.com/199/13.html
• http//www.librarything.com/author/eliotts
• http//www.kirjasto.sci.fi/tseliot.htm
• http//www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/im/ts
  e1.html
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot