Everything you need to study or teach literature!

The Cocktail Party Author Biography

Many readers familiar with T. S Eliot's works do not realize that he was American by birth. In fact, he came from an old New England family. His grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, moved to St. Louis in the 1830s, where he founded Washington University and was instrumental in the opposition to slavery, decades before the issue was settled by the Civil War. His father, Henry Ware Eliot, was a local businessman who worked his way up to the presidency of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company of St. Louis His mother, Charlotte Steams, was an author and a social crusader credited with great social advances in the then-novel field of juvenile justice. Thomas Steams Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 26, 1888.

When he was eighteen he entered Harvard, where his studies focused on classical literature, which would influence the direction of his thought throughout his lifetime. He...
(read more)