T. S. Eliot

26 September 1888 - 04 January 1965

TSE , an American settled in England, was the dominant voice in English poetry during the first half of the twentieth century, as well as an immensely influential critic. His early experimental poems excel at catching an atmosphere or mood, often a moment of stasis and self-doubt. The Waste Land, a brilliant collage of fragments, has been seen to express the fears of a whole society about the threatened end of culture and amenity called civilization. After Eliot's conversion to Christianity his poetry moved to sombre investigations of the spiritual life: of time, fate, decision, guilt, and reconciliation. Meanwhile his criticism grappled with the the relation of past to present in terms of the contemporary relationship to tradition. TSE also wrote lively comic verse, and in theatrical writing he moved on from pageant and historical religious drama to symbolic representation of spiritual issues through events in banal daily life.

Milestones

26 September 1888

Thomas Stearns Eliot , poet, playwright, and critic, was born at 2635 Locust Street, St Louis, Missouri, the youngest of seven children, separated by a gap of several years from his closest sibling.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

October 1922

TSE published his epoch-making poem The Waste Land, without the later accompanying notes, in the first number of The Criterion, of which he was editor.

Gallup, Donald Clifford. T.S. Eliot: A Bibliography. Harcourt, Brace.

15 December 1922

The Waste Land, TSE 's highly allusive poem about the modern condition, first appeared as a separate publication, with its accompanying notes, in an edition by Boni and Liveright in New York.

Gallup, Donald Clifford. T.S. Eliot: A Bibliography. Harcourt, Brace.

12 September 1923

Virginia and Leonard Woolf published the first English edition of TSE 's The Waste Land at the Hogarth Press in Richmond.

Gallup, Donald Clifford. T.S. Eliot: A Bibliography. Harcourt, Brace.

Woolmer, J. Howard. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1938. Hogarth Press.

April 1936

Collected Poems by TSE appeared. Among its reprintings of historically significant pieces, the last-placed and most important new item was Burnt Norton, which later became the first of his Four Quartets.

Grant, Michael, editor. T.S. Eliot: The Critical Heritage. Routledge and Kegan Paul.

2: xii

Gordon, Lyndall. T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life. W. W. Norton.

340

Easter 1940

The Easter issue of the New English Weekly printed TSE 's East Coker (later the second poem of his Four Quartets).

Gordon, Lyndall. T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life. W. W. Norton.

353

27 February 1941

The third poem in the sequence which became TSE 's Four Quartets, The Dry Salvages, appeared in print.

Gordon, Lyndall. T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life. W. W. Norton.

372

Gallup, Donald Clifford. T.S. Eliot: A Bibliography. Harcourt, Brace.

237

15 October 1942

The final instalment of TSE 's Four Quartets, Little Gidding, was added to the three earlier poems.

Gordon, Lyndall. T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life. W. W. Norton.

379

Gallup, Donald Clifford. T.S. Eliot: A Bibliography. Harcourt, Brace.

238

11 May 1943

The first complete edition of TSE 's Four Quartets, the poetic culmination of his spiritual vision, was published by Harcourt Brace in New York.

Gallup, Donald Clifford. T.S. Eliot: A Bibliography. Harcourt, Brace.

72-3

4 January 1965

TSE , poet and critic, died at 3 Kensington Court Gardens in London of emphysema.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Influences

26 September 1888

Thomas Stearns Eliot , poet, playwright, and critic, was born at 2635 Locust Street, St Louis, Missouri, the youngest of seven children, separated by a gap of several years from his closest sibling.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.