Eliot was born September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri. He was a bright and hardworking student, who experienced a classical, wide-ranging education. Eliot studied philosophy and French literature at Harvard. He also joined the staff of the university's literary journal, the Harvard Advocate, in which he first published parts of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." In 1909 he graduated from Harvard with a bachelor's degree in philosophy, and he finished his master's degree in philosophy a year later. Over the next six years, he pursued further graduate studies in philosophy at a number of institutions in the United States and Europe, including Harvard, the Paris Sorbonne, Marburg in Germany, and Merton College, Oxford, ultimately completing his dissertation in 1916.

During the period of his studies, he met two people who would prove to be influential to his writing. The first was fellow poet Ezra Pound, who became...