T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), British poet, dramatist, and critic, born in the US. He studied philosophy at Harvard, and Oxford, where he met the poet Ezra Pound. On taking up residence in London he worked as a teacher and a bank clerk before becoming a director of a London publishing house. The poetry collection Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) made his name in literary circles, and The Waste Land (1922), a powerful expose of the disillusionment of modern city life, confirmed him as a major poet. After living in England for some years he took British nationality in 1928 and announced his conversion to Anglo-Catholicism. His later poetry includes Four Quartets (1943) and the light verse in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939). He also contributed to the revival of verse drama in the theatre with such plays as Murder in the Cathedral (1935), based on the assassination of St Thomas Becket, and The Cocktail Party (1949). Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1948.
