Murder in the Cathedral | T. S. Eliot Biography

T. S. Eliot was bom in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 26, 1888, into a family that stressed the importance of education and tradition. His paternal grandfather had moved to St. Louis from Boston and founded Washington University; the young Eliot entered Harvard University in 1906 to study French literature and philosophy (he received a baccalaureate degree in 1909 and a master's degree in 1910). In 1910, Eliot attended the Sorbonne and studied under the philosopher Henri Bergson; he later studied at Oxford and completed his dissertation on philosopher F. H. Bradley in 1916, when he was living in London with his first wife, Vivien Haigh-Wood.

During this phase of his life, Eliot was befriended by die American poet Ezra Pound who helped him shape and publish his poetry, specifically "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" which first appeared in the journal Poetry. 1917 saw the publication of Eliot's first volume of verse, Prufrock and Other Observations which was greeted with enthusiasm by its readers. Eliot's success, however, was not enough to relive the stress he felt from his failing marriage; he suffered an emotional breakdown and sought treatment at a sanitorium in Switzerland. It was there that he completed the first draft of what is regarded as his best—and most difficult to interpret—work, The Waste Land, Upon returning to London, Eliot edited the poem (at Pound's request) and published it in the American journal the Dial. More and more readers began paying attention to Eliot's new verse forms, which reflected the angst and desperation of people who had just lived through the terror and chaos of World War I.

Eliot renewed himself personally as he had the world of poetry: in 1927, he became a British subject and a confirmed member of the Anglican church. During this same year, he stated his controversial creed of conservatism, describing himself as "Anglo-Catholic in religion, royalist in politics and classicist in literature." In 1930, another of his important poems, Ash Wednesday, was published, and in 1932 Eliot returned to the United States to become the Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. He was almost completely estranged from his wife and remained in the United States to lecture at various universities. In 1934 his first play, Sweeney Agonistes, was produced, followed the same year by his second drama, The Rock. However, it was 1935's Murder in the Cathedral that drew as much attention to Eliot's playwriting as his poetry. His next play, The Family Reunion, was produced in 1939, followed in 1943 by the poem Four Quartets. Vivien died in 1947 and in 1948 Eliot received the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Order of Merit by George VI. His next play, The Cocktail Party, was produced in 1949 and proved to be a critical and commercial success. Two other plays followed: The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958). During his playwriting career, Eliot continued to write verse, essays, and volumes of criticism. He was remarried in 1957, this time to Valerie Fletcher, to whom he remained married until his death in 1965. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

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