Thomas Steams Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 26, 1888. Although the Eliots had lived in St. Louis for two generations, the family was originally from New England, and Eliot attended the Milton School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then Harvard University. In 1913 he began the study of philosophy in England at Merton College, Oxford. When his work at Oxford was completed, Eliot remained in England and in 1927 became a British citizen. He died in London on January 5, 1965.

Although Eliot taught briefly at Highgate School, London, and at Harvard as Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry, he was primarily a poet and man of letters. From 1922 to 1939 he edited the Criterion, and for a number of years he was associated with the publishing house of Fibber and Gwyer (now Faber and Faber).

A concern of much of Eliot's poetry is the problem of a...