Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on September 26th, 1888 in Missouri. He grew up in St. Louis, and was a student at Harvard.
In 1914, at the age of 25, he moved from the United States to England. Eliot married, and settled there. He became a British national at the age of 39.
Eliot’s work, ‘The Waste Land’ was a landmark in modern poetry. It is regarded as a seminal poetic work of the twentieth century. ‘The Waste Land’, made Eliot a world famous poet.
It was in London that Eliot came under the influence of his contemporary Ezra Pound. Pound had recognized the genius of Eliot, and aided him in his early days as a poet. ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ was published in 1915 with the help of Pound. ‘The Hollow Men’, ‘Ash Wednesday’, and ‘Four Quartets’, are his other important works.
‘Murder in the Cathedral’ and ‘The Cocktail Party’ are the standout plays of Eliot. T.S. Eliot won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1948. He was selected by the Nobel Prize Committee for his outstanding contribution to poetry. T.S. Eliot died on January 4th, 1965.