T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock LINKS What the Thunder Said: T. S. Eliot http://www.deathclock.com/thunder/ This useful site contains a timeline of Eliot's life, the texts of many of his most noteworthy poems and essays, and an extensive list of links regarding Eliot and his works. BIOGRAPHY T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri. His father was president of the Hydraulic Press Brick Company, his mother a teacher, social worker, and writer. Educated in private academies, Eliot earned two philosophy degrees at Harvard (B.A., 1909; M.A., 1910). After graduate study in Paris and England, he worked for eight years as a clerk in Lloyd's Bank in London, and became a naturalized British citizen in 1927. He was editor, then director of Faber & Gwyer Publishers (later Faber & Faber) from 1925 to 1965, and spent time in the United States as a visiting lecturer and scholar. Admirers and detractors agree that Eliot was the most imposing and influential poet writing between the world wars. His poems "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1917) and The Waste Land (1922) are among his earliest and most famous. Acknowledging his dependence on a preexisting cultural tradition, Eliot explained: "The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be altered." Eliot also wrote plays, including Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1950). The long-running Broadway musical Cats is based on his 1939 verse collection, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948.