T. S. Eliot biography :

Thomas Stearns Eliot was the youngest of seven children of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Champe Stearns. He was born on 26 September 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Eliot studied at St. Louis’s Smith Academy from 1898 to 1905. Although he could have entered Harvard University, he spent a year at the Milton Academy in Massachusetts instead. He entered Harvard in 1906 and earned his A.B. three years later. In 1910, Eliot received his A.M. also from Harvard. From 1910 – 1911, Eliot moved to Paris and continued his education at the Sorbonne. He returned to Harvard as a doctoral student.

TS Eliot initially taught at a boy’s school and worked at a bank before he became an assistant editor. In his leisure time, he would compose poetry and write critical essays. In 1915, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” a poem Eliot wrote when he was 22, was published in the Poetry Magazine. This was the start of his illustrious literary career that lasted for nearly half a century.

On 26 June 1915, Eliot married Vivienne (Vivien) Haigh-Wood. He became a British citizen in 1927, and on the same year, converted to Anglicanism. In 1933, Eliot separated from his wife. Twenty-four years later, Eliot found love again. He married Esme Valerie Fletcher, a lady 38 years his junior, on 10 January 1957.

TS Eliot, whose works always had some reference to St. Louis and New England, died on 04 January 1965 in London due to emphysema. His body was cremated and his ashes were taken to St. Michael’s Church in East Coker.