Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1888, Thomas Stearns Eliot attended Milton Academy in Massachusetts, then went on to Harvard University in 1906. As an undergraduate, Eliot developed numerous academic interests, especially in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, English idealist philosophy, and Indian mystical philosophy. Graduating in 1910, Eliot spent a year abroad, studying literature in France and Germany before returning to Harvard to pursue graduate studies in philosophy. In 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World War I, Eliot moved to England, where he studied Greek philosophy at Merton College, Oxford. Around this time, he also began a close association with poet Ezra Pound, whose help and sponsorship eventually led to the publication of Eliot’s early work and to several reviewing, writing, and editing assignments. In 1915 Eliot married Vivien Haigh- Wood, an English writer, and the pair embarked on what was to be an often-troubled marriage. That same year marked the first publication of Eliot’s work—“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was printed in Poetry magazine—as well as the beginning of what was to be a successful career as a poet, critic, and dramatist.
