II.

Life

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest son in a large, prosperous, and distinguished family. Eliot’s father, Henry Ware Eliot, Sr., was a successful businessman; his mother, Charlotte Champe Stearns, wrote prose and religious poetry. Eliot was educated at Milton Academy (a private boarding school outside of Boston, Massachusetts) and at Harvard University. He earned his undergraduate degree, after three years of study, in 1909. He then continued at Harvard, studying philosophy under George Santayana. Eliot received his M.A. degree in philosophy in 1910, after which he studied literature and languages at the Sorbonne in Paris, France; as a fellowship recipient in Germany; and at the University of Oxford in England.

After leaving Oxford, Eliot stayed in England. He became close friends with American poet Ezra Pound, who was also living abroad. In 1922 Eliot founded the literary journal The Criterion, which he edited until 1939. In 1925 he joined the publishing firm Faber and Gwyer, which later became Faber and Faber. Throughout the late 1920s and the 1930s Eliot wrote, lectured, and taught in Britain and the United States. In 1927 he became a British citizen and converted from the Unitarian Church to the Church of England.