Dec 19, 2009

Selected Essays, 1917-1932 | Author Biography

Thomas Stearns (T. S.) Eliot was born into a large and prosperous family September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri. Eliot grew up with frequent visits to Massachusetts, where his father built a house overlooking Gloucester harbor, and entered Harvard as a philosophy student in 1906. His greatest influence there was ‘‘new humanist’’ philosopher Irving Babbitt, who helped Eliot form the basis for his philosophical theories.

In 1910, Eliot moved to Paris and then to Munich to study French and German literature, but he soon reenrolled at Harvard to study Eastern philosophy....