As there is no definitive biography on Eliot, many details of his life are as yet unknown or uncertain. However, the basic facts have been established. He was born in 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, and grew up in a house at 2635 Locust Street; his summers were spent on the New England coast at Cape Ann, Massachusetts, where his family had a summer home. Thus he had both urban and rural backgrounds. In 1906 he entered Harvard College, completing his undergraduate work in three years. From 1910 to 1911 he studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and wrote some of his early poems, including a portion of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." After three more years of graduate study at Harvard (1911-1914), Eliot returned to Europe, first to Germany and then to England, where he settled permanently. There he met Ezra Pound, who was to have a profound influence on Eliot's literary career; indeed, it was Pound who arranged to have "Prufrock" published in 1917.
