Thomas Sterns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 26, 1888. He was raised in a family that had distinguished Americans since colonial days. At 18 years of age, T.S. Eliot entered Harvard, after graduating he went abroad. Then he taught in a boys school briefly before spending eight years in Lloyds Bank in London.

   T.S. Eliot inspired the musical Cats in the 1980s from his well-known book Old Possum's Book of Cats. He also wrote "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock" in 1915. After 1915, T.S. Eliot wrote such poems as "Portrait of a Lady".

   The Waste Land appeared in 1922. It was considered by many to be his most challenging work. In 1927 Thomas Sterns Eliot became a British subject and was confirmed in the Church of England.

   His essays, "For Lancelot Andrews" (1928) and his poetry, "Four Quartets" (1943) increasingly reflected this association with a traditional culture. "The Rock" (1934), his first drama, was a pageant play. This was followed by "Murder in the Cathedral" (1935), a play dealing with the assassination of Archbishop Thomas a Becket, who was later canonized.

   In 1948, King George VI bestowed the order of Merit on T.S. Eliot, and in that same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. On January 4, 1965 Thomas Sterns Eliot died at the age of 76.

   Here is one of his poems I enjoy:

Aunt Helen

Miss Helen Slingsby was my maiden aunt,
and lived in a small house near a fashionable square
Cared for by servants to the number of four.
Now when she died there was a silence in heaven
And silence at the end of her street.
The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet-
He was aware that this sort of thing had occurred before.
The dogs were handsomely provided for,
But shortly afterwards the parrot died too.
The Dresden clock continued ticking on the mantelpiece,
And the footman sat upon the dining-table
Holding the second housemaid on his knees-
Who had always been so careful while her mistress lived.

Researched and written by Jamie