Thomas Stearns Eliot, a renowned English language poet of the 20th century, was born on September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri, to a respectable middle-class family with roots in New England. He spent summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and it was expected that he would attend Harvard University, as his cousin Charles William Eliot, the 24th president of Harvard, had played a significant role in transforming the institution into a great research university.
Eliot graduated from the Milton Academy in 1906 and then attended Harvard, where he studied philosophy with prominent scholars such as George Santayana, William James, and Bertrand Russell. He completed his undergraduate degree in three years and stayed on as a teaching assistant for another year before studying philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris for a year.
After returning to Harvard in 1911, Eliot decided to spend 1914-15 at the University of Marburg in Germany, but his plans were disrupted by the outbreak of World War I. He then won a scholarship to attend Merton College at Oxford, where he met Ezra Pound, who became a close friend and mentor.
Eliot's experience in London had a profound impact on his life and work. He became disillusioned with academia and supported himself by working in a bank while forging his literary reputation. He also became enamored with England and eventually became a British subject in 1927.
Eliot's personal life was marked by tragedy and turmoil. He married Vivienne Haigh-Wood in 1915, partly to gain residency in England, but the marriage was a disaster. Vivienne's mental instability and poor health, as well as Eliot's own struggles with mental health, contributed to the deterioration of their relationship. Eliot eventually had to institutionalize Vivienne, and the couple divorced in 1933.
Despite his personal struggles, Eliot continued to produce some of the greatest masterpieces of English literature, including "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "Gerontion," "The Waste Land," and "The Hollow Men." He was also a prolific playwright, best known for "Murder in the Cathedral," "The Family Reunion," and "The Cocktail Party."
Eliot won numerous awards and accolades throughout his career, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. He married his second wife, Esmé Valerie Fletcher, in 1957, and she remained his widow until his death on January 4, 1965, at the age of 76.
