"In ten years' time," Edmund Wilson wrote in Axel's Castle, "Eliot has left upon English poetry a mark more unmistakable than any other poet writing in the English language." Recognized as the most imposing literary figure of his time--even at the time of his death--T. S. Eliot changed the way that his generation looked at literature. Through the media of poetry, drama, and criticism, he left an indelible mark on his contemporaries, and, consequently, on the future of English letters and beyond: his works have been translated into some twenty-two languages. While Eliot borrowed liberally from his predecessors and staunchly defended the importance of tradition, he is recognized as a genuine modernist who--with virtually no influence from his contemporaries--gave voice to distinctly modern themes. R. A. Scott-James noted in Fifty Years of English Literature, 1900-1950 that Eliot "brought into poetry something which in this generation was needed: a language spare, sinewy, modern; a fresh and springy metrical form; thought that was adult; and an imagination aware of what is bewildering and terrifying in modern life and in all life.
