Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) Eliot was a poet, critic, and an editor. He was a major figure in English poetry, famous for works such as “The Waste Land,” and “The Sacred Wood.” His critical essays helped to start a movement of literary modernism by stressing tradition, along with objective discipline. Eliot, along with the help of William Butler Yeats, and Ezra Pound set new poetic standards by rejecting the English romantics.Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, MO. on September 26th, 1888. He was the youngest child in a family that had seven children, and very well known ancestors. Some of these ancestors include Reverend William Greenleaf Eliot, who founded Washington University in St. Louis, and Isaac Stearns, who was one of the original settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Eliot’s father Henry Ware Eliot, was a prosperous industrialist, and his mother, Charlotte Eliot, was a writer.He attended school at Smith Academy in St. Louis, and Milton Academy in Massachusetts. Growing up with so many older people helped him to gain a high sense of maturity, even at such a young age. He also became more mature through the different cultural, and community interests that his parents had. He even more proved his maturity when he read a poem that was translated by Edward Fitzgerald.But more then proving his maturity, this poem was his first influence to become a poet. Another poet that was a major influence in Eliot’s life was Edgar Allen Poe. Poe’s “The Assignation” was the poem that ‘spiritually’ moved Eliot. After reading these inspirational works, Eliot had several jobs in which he began to write poetry for several different literary companies.In 1906, he entered Harvard University. There, he published frequently in the Harvard Advocate. ‘He took courses with such professors as Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt, the latter of who influenced ...
