"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning.
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965), was an early twentieth century poet, dramatist, publisher, playwright and literary and social critic", one of the twentieth century's major poets." and a leader of the modernist movement in literature.
T.S. Eliot is described by the editors of Norton's anthology "As one of the greatest renovators of the English poetry dialect, whose influence on a whole generation of poets, critics and intellectuals generally was enormous.".
Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), which is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including "The Waste Land" (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday" (1930) and "Four Quartets" (1945). He is also known for his seven plays, particularly "Murder in the Cathedral" (1935). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry." .
Early Life and Education.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri in the United States, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalized as a British subject in 1927 at age 39. Eliot was born into a middle class family originally from New England. T.S. Eliot's grandfather William Greenleaf Eliot had moved to St. Louis, Missouri in order to establish a Unitarian Church there. His father Henry Ware Eliot (1843-1919) was a successful businessman, president and treasurer of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St. Louis; his mother Charlotte Champe Stearns (1843-1929) wrote poetry and was a social worker, a new profession in the early twentieth century. Eliot was the last of six surviving children.
Several factors are responsible for Eliot's infatuation with literature during his childhood. First, Eliot had to overcome physical limitations as a child.