Biography Of T. S. Eliot

Personal Information: Family: Born September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri, United States; moved to England, 1914, naturalized British subject, 1927; died January 4, 1965, in London, England; buried in Westminster Abbey; son of Henry Ware (president of Hydraulic Press Brick Co.) and Charlotte Chauncey (a teacher, social worker and writer; maiden name Stearns) Eliot; married Vivienne Haigh Haigh-Wood (a dancer), January, 1915 (divorced c. 1930; died, 1947); married (Esme) Valerie Fletcher (his private secretary before their marriage), 1957; children: none. Education: Attended Smith Academy (of Washington University), St. Louis, 1898-1905; Milton Academy, Milton, MA, graduated, 1906; Harvard University, B.A. (philosophy), 1909, M.A. (philosophy), 1910, graduate study, 1911-14 (his doctoral dissertation "Experience and the Objects of Knowledge in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley," was accepted in 1916 but never presented for the degree; the dissertation was published in 1964 as Knowledge and Experience in Philosophy of F. H. Bradley); attended University of Paris (Sorbonne), 1910-11; studied in Munich, 1914; read philosophy at Merton, Oxford, 1914-15; also studied under Edward Kennard Rand, Irving Babbitt, and Alain Fournier, and attended courses given by Henri Bergson. Politics: Conservative ("royalist"). Religion: Church of England (Anglo-Catholic wing; confirmed, 1927; served as vestryman in a London church). (In his 1028 essay "For Lancelot Andrewes," Eliot called himself a "classicist," "royalist," and "Anglican." Later, in After Strange Gods, he regretted that declaration as "injudicious.") Military/Wartime Service: None; was rejected by the U.S. Navy, 1918, because of poor health. Memberships: Classical Association (president, 1941), Virgil Society (president, 1943), Books Across the Sea (president, 1943-46), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (honorary member), Accademia dei Lincei (Rome; foreign member), Bayerische Akademie der Schoenen Kuenste (Munich; foreign member), Athenaeum, Garrick Club, Oxford and Cambridge Club.

Career: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, assistant in philosophy department, 1913-14; teacher of French, Latin, mathematics, drawing, geography, and history at High Wycombe Grammar School, London, then at Highgate School, London, 1915-17; Lloyds Bank Ltd., London, clerk in the Colonial and Foreign Department, 1917-25; The Egoist, London, assistant editor, 1917-19; founder of the Criterion (literary quarterly), London, 1922, and editor, 1922-39 (ceased publication, at Eliot's decision, in 1939 because of the war and paper shortage); Faber and Gwyer Ltd. (publishers), later Faber & Faber Ltd., London, literary editor and member of the advisory hoard, 1925-65. Clark Lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1926; Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University, six months, 1932-33; Page-Barbour Lecturer at University