 1888 - 1965 (76 years) Submit Photo / Document
Has 38 ancestors but no descendants in this family tree.
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| Name |
Thomas Stearns Eliot |
| Birth |
26 Sep 1888 |
St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, United States  |
| Gender |
Male |
| FamilySearch ID |
L44M-VZY |
| Death |
4 Jan 1965 |
Kensington, Middlesex, England |
| Burial |
Church of St. Michael and All Angels' Church, East Coker, Somersetshire, England |
| Headstones |
 Submit Headstone Photo |
| Person ID |
I100287 |
mytree |
| Last Modified |
25 Feb 2024 |
| Father |
Henry Ware Eliot, b. 25 Nov 1843, St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, United States d. 8 Jan 1919, St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, United States (Age 75 years) |
| Mother |
Charlotte Champ Stearns, b. 22 Oct 1843, Baltimore City, Maryland, United States d. 10 Sep 1929, Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States (Age 85 years) |
| Marriage |
27 Oct 1868 |
Lexington, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States |
| Family ID |
F31503 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Family 1 |
Vivien Haigh-Wood, b. 28 May 1888, Bury, Lancashire, England d. 22 Jan 1947, Harringay, Middlesex, England (Age 58 years) |
| Marriage |
26 Jun 1915 |
London, Middlesex, England |
| Family ID |
F31505 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Last Modified |
5 May 2024 |
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| Event Map |
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 | Birth - 26 Sep 1888 - St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, United States |
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 | Marriage - 26 Jun 1915 - London, Middlesex, England |
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| Marriage - 10 Jan 1957 - London, Middlesex, England |
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 | Death - 4 Jan 1965 - Kensington, Middlesex, England |
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 | Burial - - Church of St. Michael and All Angels' Church, East Coker, Somersetshire, England |
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| Notes |
- Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965), was an es s ayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and "one of t h e twentieth century's major poets". Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in th e U nited States, to a prominent Boston Brahmin family, he moved to Engla nd i n 1914 at the age of 25, settling, working, and marrying there. He b ecam e a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39, renouncing his America n pas sport.
Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. A l fred Prufrock" (1915), which was seen as a masterpiece of the Modernis t m ovement. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the Engli sh l anguage, including The Waste Land (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925), " Ash W ednesday" (1930), and Four Quartets (1943). He was also known for h is sev en plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cock tail Pa rty (1949). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 , "for hi s outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry"
Early life and education
The Eliots were a Boston Brahmin family with roots in Old and New Englan d . Thomas Eliot's paternal grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, had mov e d to St. Louis, Missouri, to establish a Unitarian Christian church the re . His father, Henry Ware Eliot (1843–1919), was a successful businessm an , president and treasurer of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St L oui s. His mother, Charlotte Champe Stearns (1843–1929), wrote poetry an d wa s a social worker, a new profession in the early 20th century.
Eliot was the last of six surviving children; his parents were both 44 y e ars old when he was born. Eliot was born at 2635 Locust Street, a prope rt y owned by his grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot. His four sister s wer e between 11 and 19 years older; his brother was eight years older . Know n to family and friends as Tom, he was the namesake of his materna l grand father, Thomas Stearns.
Eliot's childhood infatuation with literature can be ascribed to sever a l factors. Firstly, he had to overcome physical limitations as a child . S truggling from a congenital double inguinal hernia, he could not part icip ate in many physical activities and thus was prevented from socializ ing w ith his peers. As he was often isolated, his love for literature de velope d. Once he learned to read, the young boy immediately became obses sed wit h books and was absorbed in tales depicting savages, the Wild Wes t, or Ma rk Twain's thrill-seeking Tom Sawyer. In his memoir of Eliot, hi s frien d Robert Sencourt comments that the young Eliot "would often cur l up in t he window-seat behind an enormous book, setting the drug of dre ams agains t the pain of living." Secondly, Eliot credited his hometown w ith fuellin g his literary vision: "It is self-evident that St. Louis aff ected me mor e deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel th at there is s omething in having passed one's childhood beside the big ri ver, which i s incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider my self fortunat e to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New Yor k, or London."
From 1898 to 1905, Eliot attended Smith Academy, where his studies inclu d ed Latin, Ancient Greek, French, and German. He began to write poetry w he n he was fourteen under the influence of Edward Fitzgerald's Rubaiya t o f Omar Khayyam, a translation of the poetry of Omar Khayyam. He sai d th e results were gloomy and despairing and he destroyed them. His firs t pub lished poem, "A Fable For Feasters", was written as a school exerci se an d was published in the Smith Academy Record in February 1905. Als o publis hed there in April 1905 was his oldest surviving poem in manuscr ipt, an u ntitled lyric, later revised and reprinted as "Song" in The Har vard Advoc ate, Harvard University's student magazine. He also publishe d three shor t stories in 1905, "Birds of Prey", "A Tale of a Whale" an d "The Man Wh o Was King". The last mentioned story significantly reflect s his explorat ion of Igorot Village while visiting the 1904 World's Fai r of St. Louis . Such a link with primitive people importantly antedate s his anthropolog ical studies at Harvard.
Eliot lived in St. Louis, Missouri for the first sixteen years of his li f e at the house on Locust St. where he was born. After going away to sch oo l in 1905, he only returned to St. Louis for vacations and visits. Des pit e moving away from the city, Eliot wrote to a friend that the "Missou ri a nd the Mississippi have made a deeper impression on me than any othe r par t of the world.
Following graduation, Eliot attended Milton Academy in Massachusetts f o r a preparatory year, where he met Scofield Thayer who later publishe d Th e Waste Land. He studied philosophy at Harvard College from 1906 t o 1909 , earning his bachelor's degree after three years, instead of th e usual f our While a student, Eliot was placed on academic probation an d graduate d with a pass degree (i.e. no honours). He recovered and persi sted, attai ning a B.A. in an elective program best described as comparat ive literatu re in three years, and an M.A. in English literature in th e fourth. Fran k Kermode writes that the most important moment of Eliot' s undergraduat e career was in 1908 when he discovered Arthur Symons's Th e Symbolist Mov ement in Literature. This introduced him to Jules Laforgu e, Arthur Rimbau d, and Paul Verlaine. Without Verlaine, Eliot wrote, h e might never hav e heard of Tristan Corbière and his book Les amours jau nes, a work that a ffected the course of Eliot's life. The Harvard Advoca te published some o f his poems and he became lifelong friends with Conra d Aiken, the America n writer and critic.
After working as a philosophy assistant at Harvard from 1909 to 1910, El i ot moved to Paris where, from 1910 to 1911, he studied philosophy at t h e Sorbonne. He attended lectures by Henri Bergson and read poetry wit h He nri Alban-Fournier. From 1911 to 1914, he was back at Harvard studyi ng In dian philosophy and Sanskrit. Eliot was awarded a scholarship to Me rton C ollege, Oxford, in 1914. He first visited Marburg, Germany, wher e he plan ned to take a summer programme, but when the First World War br oke out h e went to Oxford instead. At the time so many American student s attende d Merton that the Junior Common Room proposed a motion "that th is societ y abhors the Americanization of Oxford". It was defeated by tw o votes, af ter Eliot reminded the students how much they owed American c ulture.
Eliot wrote to Conrad Aiken on New Year's Eve 1914: "I hate university t o wns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant w iv es, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures on the walls.. . O xford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead." Escaping Oxford , Elio t spent much of his time in London. This city had a monumental an d life-a ltering effect on Eliot for several reasons, the most significan t of whic h was his introduction to the influential American literary fig ure Ezra P ound. A connection through Aiken resulted in an arranged meeti ng and on 2 2 September 1914, Eliot paid a visit to Pound's flat. Pound i nstantly dee med Eliot "worth watching" and was crucial to Eliot's beginn ing career a s a poet, as he is credited with promoting Eliot through soc ial events an d literary gatherings. Thus, according to biographer John W orthen, durin g his time in England Eliot "was seeing as little of Oxfor d as possible" . He was instead spending long periods of time in London , in the compan y of Ezra Pound and "some of the modern artists whom th e war has so far s pared... It was Pound who helped most, introducing hi m everywhere." In th e end, Eliot did not settle at Merton and left afte r a year. In 1915 he t aught English at Birkbeck, University of London.
By 1916, he had completed a doctoral dissertation for Harvard on "Knowle d ge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley", but he failed t o r eturn for the viva voce exam.
Marriage
Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot, passport photograph from 1920.
In a letter to Aiken late in December 1914, Eliot, aged 26, wrote, " I a m very dependent upon women (I mean female society)." Less than fou r mont hs later, Thayer introduced Eliot to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a Cambri dge gov erness. They were married at Hampstead Register Office on 26 Jun e 1915.
After a short visit alone to his family in the United States, Eliot retu r ned to London and took several teaching jobs, such as lecturing at Birk be ck College, University of London. The philosopher Bertrand Russell too k a n interest in Vivienne while the newlyweds stayed in his flat. Some s chol ars have suggested that she and Russell had an affair, but the alleg ation s were never confirmed.
The marriage was markedly unhappy, in part because of Vivienne's healt h i ssues. In a letter addressed to Ezra Pound, she covers an extensive l is t of her symptoms, which included a habitually high temperature, fatig ue , insomnia, migraines, and colitis. This, coupled with apparent menta l in stability, meant that she was often sent away by Eliot and her docto rs fo r extended periods of time in the hope of improving her health, an d as ti me went on, he became increasingly detached from her. The coupl e formall y separated in 1933 and in 1938 Vivienne's brother, Maurice, ha d her comm itted to a lunatic asylum, against her will, where she remaine d until he r death of heart disease in 1947. Their relationship became th e subject o f a 1984 play Tom & Viv, which in 1994 was adapted as a fil m of the sam e name.
In a private paper written in his sixties, Eliot confessed: "I came to p e rsuade myself that I was in love with Vivienne simply because I wante d t o burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she pers uade d herself (also under the influence of [Ezra] Pound) that she woul d sav e the poet by keeping him in England. To her, the marriage brough t no hap piness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came Th e Waste L and."
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Has 38 ancestors but no descendants in this family tree.
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