Thomas Sterns Eliot is born September 26, 1888. He is born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Champe Stearns. 

·         In May 1910, Eliot had a suspected case of scarlet fever which almost prevented his graduation from Harvard University. In fall Eliot undertook a postgraduate year in Paris at the University of Paris. 

·         Eliot spends the beginning of 1914’s summer studying at a seminar in Marburg, Germany. Eliot departs from Germany early due to the impending World War and goes to London around August, where he meets Ezra Pound. 

Eliot travels with Conrad Aiken to London from Germany because of increasing war tensions. Here he meets Ezra Pound. Aiken shows Pound Eliot's poetry, which greatly impresses Pound. 

The Sacred Wood is a collection of essays that Eliot wrote on many authors including Shakespeare, Dante, and William Blake.

Eliot suffers a breakdown in the summer of 1921 as a result of his father's passing in 1919 and his wife Vivien's deteriorating health. After his breakdown, his physician recommends taking time off to recover. His physician recommended taking time off at the coast of Margate in England. Eliot's friend Bertrand Russell recommends a sanitarium in Lausanne Switzerland. Over the course of 3 months Eliot spends time at both where he finishes his writings on "The Waste Land".

The Waste Land is a 434 line poem presented in five-parts, written by T. S. Eliot; considered by many to be one of the greatest poets in history. It is one of the most important writings of modernist poetry. The Waste Land loosely follows the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King while including cultural shades from Western canon, Buddhism and Hindu Upanishads. The Waste Land is highly recommended for those who enjoy important poetic works and for those newly discovering the talent of T. S. Eliot.

Three essays on 17th century literature, with particular emphasis on Dryden's poetry and criticism

·         Eliot delivers the Clark Lectures at Cambridge University in 1926. His speech was entitled “The metaphysical poetry of the 17th century”. His speech took place Friday, January 1st 1926 at 2 pm.

Contains a drawing by E. McKnight Kauffer

This study of the noted literary figure of the Restoration deals separately with his various roles as poet, dramatist and critic.

·         Eliot delivers the Norton Lectures at Harvard University in 1932 and 1933. Eliot’s 1932-33 speech was entitled “The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England. This speech was later published by Harvard University Press.

Eliot begins with the appearance of poetry criticism in the age of Dryden, when poetry became the province of an intellectual aristocracy rather than part of the mind and popular tradition of a whole people. Wordsworth and Coleridge, in their attempt to revolutionize the language of poetry at the end of the eighteenth century, made exaggerated claims for poetry and the poet, culminating in Shelley's assertion that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind." And, in the doubt and decaying moral definitions of the nineteenth century, Arnold transformed poetry into a surrogate for religion.

By studying poetry and criticism in the context of its time, Eliot suggests that we can learn what is permanent about the nature of poetry, and makes a powerful case for both its autonomy and its pluralism in this century.

Seeks to define and illustrate a point of view toward theElizabeth drama which is different from that of the nineteenth-century tradition.

Revised as Essays On Elizabethan Drama (1956)

Republished as Elizabethan Dramatists (1963)

The choruses in this pageant play represent a new verse experiment on Mr. Eliot's part; and taken together make a sequence of verses about twice the length of "The Waste Land." Mr. Eliot has written the words; the scenario and design of the play were provided by a collaborator, and the purpose was to provide a pageant of the Church of England for presentation on a particular occasion. The action turns upon the efforts and difficulties of a group of London masons in building a church. Incidentally a number of historical scenes, illustrative of church-building, are introduced. The play, enthusiastically greeted, was first presented in England, at Sadler's Wells; the production included much pageantry, mimetic action, and ballet, with music by Dr. Martin Shaw.

T. S. Eliot's verse dramatization of the murder of Thomas Becket at Canterbury, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Archbishop Thomas Becket speaks fatal words before he is martyred in T. S. Eliot's best-known drama, based on the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1170. Praised for its poetically masterful handling of issues of faith, politics, and the common good, T. S. Eliot's play bolstered his reputation as the most significant poet of his time.

A collection of essays grappling with some of the most significant topics of our time, Essays Ancient and Modern reveals Eliot’s thoughts on his literary contemporaries and predecessors, the role of religion in a secular society, and the continuing tradition of the classics in modern education. Astute and erudite, here we see the inner thoughts of one of our greatest minds, articulated in some of his most eloquent and direct prose.

The basis for the musical phenomenon Cats, this collection of 14 inviting rhymes — the mixture of the real and the impossible, the familiar and the fantastic — make for a set of poems that no child or adult can possibly resist. 

These three lectures by the renowned poet and playwright T. S. Eliot address the direction of religious thought toward criticism of political and economic systems. They were originally delivered in March 1939 at Corpus Christi College.

Republished in (1940)

A modern verse play dealing with the problem of man’s guilt and his need for expiation through his acceptance of responsibility for the sin of humanity. “What poets and playwrights have been fumbling at in their desire to put poetry into drama and drama into poetry has here been realized.... This is the finest verse play since the Elizabethans” (New York Times).

The last major verse written by Nobel laureate T. S. Eliot, considered by Eliot himself to be his finest work.

Four Quartets is a rich composition that expands the spiritual vision introduced in “The Waste Land.” Here, in four linked poems (“Burnt Norton,” “East Coker,” “The Dry Salvages,” and “Little Gidding”), spiritual, philosophical, and personal themes emerge through symbolic allusions and literary and religious references from both Eastern and Western thought. It is the culminating achievement by a man considered the greatest poet of the twentieth century and one of the seminal figures in the evolution of modernism.

Chosen by Eliot himself, the poems in this volume represent the poet’s most important work before Four Quartets. Included here is some of the most celebrated verse in modern literature-”The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Gerontion,” “The Waste Land,” “The Hollow Men,” and “Ash Wednesday”-as well as many other fine selections from Eliot’s early work.

Republished in (1967)

The word culture, in recent years, has been widely and erroneously employed in political, educational, and journalistic contexts. In helping to define a word so greatly misused, T. S. Eliot contradicts many of our popular assumptions about culture, reminding us that it is not the possession of a class but of a whole society and yet its preservation may depend on the continuance of a class system, and that a “classless” society may be a society in which culture has ceased to exist.

Surveying the contemporary scene, Mr. Eliot points out that our standards of culture are lower than they were fifty years ago, finds evidence of this decay in every department of human activity, and sees no reason why the decay of culture should not proceed much further. He suggests that culture and religion have a common root and that if one decays the other may die too. He reminds us that “the Russians have been the first modern people to practice the political direction of culture consciously, and to attack at every point the culture of any people whom they wish to dominate.” The appendix includes his broadcasts to Europe, ending with a plea to preserve the legacy of Greece, Rome, and Israel, and Europe’s legacy throughout the last 2,000 years.

Republished in (1949)

A modern verse play about the search for meaning, in which a psychiatrist is the catalyst for the action. “An authentic modern masterpiece” (New York Post)

Republished in (1967) 

This omnibus collection includes all of the author’s early poetry as well as the Four Quartets, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, and the plays "Murder in the Cathedral", "The Family Reunion", and "The Cocktail Party".

Republished in (1953)

Republished in (1954)

The Confidential Clerk was first produced at the Edinburgh Festival in the summer of 1953.

'The dialogue of The Confidential Clerk has a precision and a lightly felt rhythm unmatched in the writing of any contemporary dramatist.' (Times Literary Supplement)

'A triumph of dramatic skill: the handling of the two levels of the play is masterly and Eliot's verse registers its greatest achievement on the stage - passages of great lyrical beauty are incorporated into the dialogue.' (Spectator)

Republished in (1956)

Foreword by Sir Anthony Eden. Text of a lecture delivered at a literary luncheon, organized by the London Conservative Union, at the Overseas League, London, April 19, 1955.

T. S. Eliot was not only one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century—he was also one of the most acute writers on his craft. In On Poetry and Poets, which was first published in 1957, Eliot explores the different forms and purposes of poetry in essays such as "The Three Voices of Poetry," "Poetry and Drama," and "What Is Minor Poetry?" as well as the works of individual poets, including Virgil, Milton, Byron, Goethe, and Yeats. As he writes in "The Music of Poetry," "We must expect a time to come when poetry will have again to be recalled to speech. The same problems arise, and always in new forms; and poetry has always before it . . . an ‘endless adventure.'"

One of Eliot's plays

T.S. Eliot considered Herbert's religious verse above John Donne's and placed him firmly in the ranks of the great English poets. Peter Porter's new introduction gives a fresh perspective on the poetry of Herbert and on Eliot's study itself.

In this volume, one of the most distinguished poets of our century selected all of his poetry through 1962 that he wished to preserve. An event of major literary significance, Collected Poems 1909-1962 was published on T. S. Eliot's seventy-fifth birthday. It offers the complete text of Collected Poems 1909-1935, the full text of "Four Quartets", and several other poems. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, widely honored for his poetry, criticism, essays, and plays, T. S. Eliot exerted a profound influence on his contemporaries in the arts as well as on a great international audience of readers.

T. S. Elliot left Harvard during his third year of study in the department of philosophy and went to England. Forty-six years later he authorized the publication of his doctoral dissertation but the book is virtually impossible to find today.

Here we have a reprint of his sympathetic but not entirely uncritial study of the English idealist philosopher F. H. Bradley. Enthusiastic approval came to Eliot at the time from Harvard pragmatist Josiah Royce, who pronounced his writing of philosophy "the work of an expert."

Eliot's critical literary theory was deeply influenced by his early philosophical outlook. This rewarding book provides a potent refutation of the false but frequent claim that Eliot's poetic and critical intelligence had no philosophical writings, making this book indispensable to all literary critics and theorists.

These influential essay and lectures by T. S. Eliot span nearly a half century—from 1917, when he published The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, to 1961, four years before his death. With the luminosity and clarity of a first-rate intellect, Eliot considers the uses of literary criticism, the writers who had the greatest influence on his own work, and the importance of being truly educated.

T. S. Eliot dies January 4th, 1965. As per Eliot’s wishes his remains were interred at St. Michael’s church in East Coker, Somerset, England.

T. S. Eliot's ashes are interred at St. Michael's Church in East Coker.

Each facsimile page of the original manuscript is accompanied here by a typeset transcript on the facing page. This book shows how the original, which was much longer than the first published version, was edited through handwritten notes by Ezra Pound, by Eliot’s first wife, and by Eliot himself. Edited and with an Introduction by Valerie Eliot; Preface by Ezra Pound.

Thirty-one essays-categorized as “essays in generalization,” “appreciations of individual authors,” and “social and religious criticism”- written over a half century. This volume reveals Eliot’s original ideas, cogent conclusions, and skill and grace in language. Edited and with an Introduction by Frank Kermode; Index. Published jointly with Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Included her are all the significant extant letters Eliot wrote up to age 24 as well as many letters written to him by his family, friends, and contemporaries. There are insights into his struggle to earn a living, care for a wife who was frequently ill, edit a magazine, and become known as a critic and poet. And through the correspondence emerges a memorable view of the social and intellectual milieu before and after World War I.

Valerie Eliot has written a detailed introduction, provided annotations and commentary, and selected numerous photographs of Eliot and his world, many of which have never been shown publicly. All these elements combine to create an exceptional portrait of Eliot in the early years of his personal and professional development -- the closest approximation readers will ever have to an autobiography of the poet.

Republished in (1994)

This extraordinary trove of previously unpublished early works includes drafts of poems such as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” as well as ribald verse and other youthful curios. “Perhaps the most significant event in Eliot scholarship in the past twenty-five years” (New York Times Book Review). Edited by Christopher Ricks.

Newly revised and in paperback for the first time, this definitive, annotated edition of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land includes as a bonus all the essays Eliot wrote as he was composing his masterpiece. Enriched with period photographs, a London map of cited locations, groundbreaking information on the origins of the work, and full annotations, the volume is itself a landmark in literary history.

The volume offers 1,400 letters, charting Eliot's journey toward conversion to the Anglican faith, as well as his transformation from banker to publisher and his appointment as director of the new publishing house Faber & Gwyer. The prolific and various correspondence in this volume testifies to Eliot's growing influence as cultural commentator and editor.