T. S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 26, 1888, into a family that stressed the importance of education and tradition. His paternal grandfather had moved to St. Louis from Boston and founded Washington University; the young Eliot entered Harvard University in 1906 to study French literature and philosophy (he received a baccalaureate degree in 1909 and a master's degree in 1910). In 1910, Eliot attended the Sorbonne and studied under the philosopher Henri Bergson; he later studied at Oxford and completed his dissertation on philosopher F. H. Bradley in 1916, when he was living in London with his first wife, Vivien Haigh-Wood.

During this phase of his life, Eliot was befriended by die American poet Ezra Pound, who helped him shape and publish his poetry, specifically "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" which first appeared in the journal Poetry. 1917 saw the publication of Eliot's first volume of verse...