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T. S. Eliot

トーマス・ステアンズ・エリオット

Thomas Stearns Eliot

Pen Names: Old Possum（Nickname given by Ezra Pound. Appears as a playful byname associated with Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.）

Profile

Gender
Male
Born
1888-09-26 （St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.）
Died
1965-01-04 （London (Kensington), England） age 76
Nationality
United States (until 1927), United Kingdom (from 1927)
Languages
English
Religion
Anglo-Catholic (Church of England) Baptized in 1927
Residence History
St. Louis (birth and childhood) → Paris (1910–1911) → Oxford (Merton College, 1914–1915, brief) → London (long-term residence and primary work base) → Chelsea / Kensington (later life)

Career

Occupations
poet, essayist, playwright, publisher/editor, literary critic
Active Years
1905-1965
Memberships
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (member), American Philosophical Society (member), Society of King Charles the Martyr (life member)
Influenced By
Dante Alighieri, Ezra Pound, French Symbolists (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, etc.), Indic traditions (Upanishads, Sanskrit thought), Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine
Influenced
Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Derek Walcott, Bob Dylan (influence on songwriting/lyrics), Andrew Lloyd Webber (influence through Cats)

Education

Smith Academy (Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School)
Period: 1898–1905
Year of Graduation: 1905
Country: United States
Preparatory school associated with Washington University; studied classical languages and modern languages.
Milton Academy
Period: 1905–1906
Year of Graduation: 1906
Country: United States
A preparatory year before Harvard; met Scofield Thayer.
Harvard University
English literature / comparative electives
Degree: AB, AM
Period: 1906–1910
Year of Graduation: 1910
Country: United States
Completed BA (accelerated) and MA in English literature; studied Sanskrit and Indian philosophy as graduate student.
University of Paris
Philosophy
Period: 1910–1911
Year of Graduation: 1911
Country: France
Attended lectures by Henri Bergson and engaged with French poetry and philosophy.
Merton College, University of Oxford
Period: 1914–1915
Year of Graduation: 1915
Country: United Kingdom
Held a scholarship but did not settle at Merton; left after about a year and worked in London.

Awards

Nobel Prize in Literature
1948
Work: Overall contribution to present-day poetry (notably Four Quartets)
Organization: Nobel Prize Committee
Result: winner
Order of Merit
1948
Organization: Royal Household / United Kingdom
Result: honor
Hanseatic Goethe Prize
1955
Organization: Hanseatic Goethe Prize (Hamburg)
Result: winner
Dante Medal
1959
Organization: Florence / awarding body
Result: winner
Presidential Medal of Freedom
1964
Organization: Office of the President of the United States
Result: honor
Tony Award (Best Play)
1950
Work: The Cocktail Party (Broadway production)
Category: Best Play
Organization: Tony Awards
Result: winner
Tony Award (posthumous, for Cats)
1983
Work: Poems used in the musical Cats (posthumous)
Category: Best Book of a Musical / Best Original Score (shared)
Organization: Tony Awards
Result: winner (posthumous)
Ivor Novello Award
1982
Work: Memory (song from Cats using his poems)
Category: Best Song Musically and Lyrically
Organization: Ivors Academy
Result: winner (posthumous)

Awards & Nominations

Works

Major Works

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

1915 poem (modernist long poem)

A dramatic monologue exploring urban alienation and the speaker's paralysis and self-doubt; famous for its startling opening lines.

alienationmodern citytime and mortality

The Waste Land

1922 poem (modernist long poem)

A fragmented, allusive long poem that uses multiple voices and quotations to map postwar disillusionment and the search for renewal.

fragmentationcultural declinereligious and spiritual renewal

The Hollow Men

1925 poem

A meditation on barrenness and spiritual emptiness in the interwar period; famous for its concluding line 'Not with a bang but a whimper.'

lossreligious anguishhistory and modernity

Murder in the Cathedral

1935 play (verse drama)

A verse play about the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, notable for its religious themes and ritualistic structure.

faith and powermartyrdomritual

Four Quartets

1943 poems (linked long poems)

A sequence of four long poems meditating on time, being, and spiritual salvation; regarded by Eliot as his masterpiece.

timespiritualitysalvation

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

1939 light verse / children's verse

A collection of whimsical poems about cats; later formed the basis for Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats.

personified animalshumorcharacter poems
Adaptations
  • [stage (musical)] Cats / Trevor Nunn (1981)
  • [film] Cats / Tom Hooper (2019)
Translations
  • Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (translated into many languages)

Bibliography

  • Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
  • Poems (1920)
  • The Waste Land (1922)
  • The Hollow Men (1925)
  • Ash-Wednesday (1930)
  • Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)
  • Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
  • Four Quartets (1943)
  • Selected Essays, The Sacred Wood, and other critical works (1920s onward)

Adaptations

  • Musical Cats (Andrew Lloyd Webber, 1981)
  • Film Cats (Tom Hooper, 2019)
  • Tom & Viv (play and film about Eliot's marriage)

Style & Themes

Literary Style
Modernismuse of quotation and fragmentationformal precision and crafted versetheoretical grounding in critical essays
Recurring Motifs
fragmentationtime (past/present/future)religion and salvationurban decay and isolation

Health

  • emphysema
    晩年
    Decline in later life; cause of death in 1965.

Legacy

A central figure of 20th-century English-language poetry and a leading modernist innovator. Influential as poet, critic and playwright; his reputation is also contested due to passages regarded as anti‑Semitic.

Academic Societies

  • T. S. Eliot Society (UK)
  • T. S. Eliot Society (US)

Archives

  • King's College, Cambridge (collections / papers)
  • Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale (T. S. Eliot collection)
  • Princeton University (Emily Hale letters / related deposits)
  • Harvard University archives
  • British Library (related holdings)

In Popular Culture

  • Broad popular cultural reach via the musical Cats and its adaptations
  • Famous lines and phrases widely quoted and referenced in media

Quotes

  • This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.
    Source: The Hollow Men (1925)
  • I regard the Four Quartets as my masterpiece.
    Source: Statement / essays (general reference) (1943)

Trivia

  • Became a British citizen in 1927 and renounced U.S. citizenship.
  • Converted to the Church of England (Anglicanism) in 1927.
  • Married twice and had no children.
  • Light verse collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats served as the basis for the musical Cats.