Editing T. S. Eliot (section)

===Early life and education===
The [[Eliot family (America)|Eliots]] were a [[Boston Brahmin]] family with roots in [[England]] and [[New England]]. Eliot's paternal grandfather, [[William Greenleaf Eliot]], had moved to [[St. Louis]], Missouri,<ref name=EB/><ref>{{cite book |last=Bush |first=Ronald |title=T. S. Eliot: The Modernist in History |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |location=New York |year=1991 |page=72 |isbn=978-0-52139-074-3}}</ref> to establish a [[Unitarianism|Unitarian]] Christian church there. His father, [[Henry Ware Eliot]], was a successful businessman, president and treasurer of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St Louis. His mother, [[Charlotte Champe Stearns]], who wrote poetry, was a [[social worker]], then a new profession in the U.S. Eliot was the last of six surviving children. Known to family and friends as Tom, he was the namesake of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Stearns. Eliot lived in St. Louis, Missouri, for the first 16 years of his life at the house on [[Locust Street (St. Louis)|Locust Street]] where he was born. After going away to school in 1905, he returned to St. Louis only for vacations and visits. Despite moving away from the city, Eliot wrote to a friend that "Missouri and [[Mississippi River|the Mississippi]] have made a deeper impression on me than any other part of the world."<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/LiterarySt.Louis|title=Literary St. Louis|publisher=Associates of St. Louis University Libraries, Inc. and Landmarks Association of St. Louis, Inc.|year=1969}}</ref>

Eliot's childhood love of literature can be traced to several factors. First, he had to overcome physical limitations as a child. Struggling from a congenital double [[inguinal hernia]], he could not participate in many physical activities and thus was prevented from socialising with his peers. As he was often isolated, his love for literature developed. Once he learned to read, the young boy immediately became obsessed with books, favouring tales of savage life, the Wild West, or [[Mark Twain]]'s ''[[Tom Sawyer]]''.<ref>{{cite book|last=Worthen|first=John|title=T.S. Eliot: A Short Biography|year=2009|publisher=Haus Publishing|location=London|page=9}}</ref> In his memoir about Eliot, his friend Robert Sencourt comments that the young Eliot "would often curl up in the window-seat behind an enormous book, setting the drug of dreams against the pain of living."<ref>{{cite book|last=Sencourt|first=Robert|title=T.S. Eliot, A Memoir|year=1971|publisher=Garnstone Limited|location=London|page=18}}</ref> Secondly, Eliot credited his hometown with fuelling his literary vision: "It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London."<ref>Letter to Marquis Childs quoted in ''[[St. Louis Post Dispatch]]'' (15 October 1930) and in the address "American Literature and the American Language" delivered at [[Washington University in St. Louis]] (9 June 1953), published in Washington University Studies, ''New Series: Literature and Language'', no. 23 (St. Louis: Washington University Press, 1953), pg. 6.</ref>

From 1898 to 1905, Eliot attended [[Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School|Smith Academy]], the boys college preparatory division of [[Washington University in St. Louis|Washington University]], where his studies included [[Ancient Greek]], [[Latin]], [[French language| French]], and [[German language| German]]. He began to write poetry when he was 14, under the influence of [[Edward FitzGerald (poet)|Edward Fitzgerald]]'s translation of the ''[[Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam]].'' He said the results were gloomy and despairing and he destroyed them.<ref name="hall interview"/> His first published poem, "A Fable For Feasters", was written as a school exercise and was published in the ''Smith Academy Record'' in February 1905.<ref name=Gallup>{{cite book|first=Donald|last=Gallup|title=T.S. Eliot: A Bibliography|publisher=Harcourt, Brace & World|location=New York City|date=1969|asin=B000TM4Z00|page=195|edition=A Revised and Extended}}</ref> Also published there in April 1905 was his oldest surviving poem in manuscript, an untitled lyric, later revised and reprinted as "Song" in ''[[The Harvard Advocate]]''.<ref name=earlyyouth>{{cite book|first=T. S.|last=Eliot|title=Poems Written in Early Youth|editor-first=John Davy|editor-last=Hayward|editor-link=John Davy Hayward|publisher=[[Farrar, Straus and Giroux]]|location=New York City|date=1967|pages=33–34}}</ref> He published three short stories in 1905, "Birds of Prey", "A Tale of a Whale" and "The Man Who Was King". The last mentioned story reflected his exploration of the [[Igorot people|Igorot Village]] while visiting the [[1904 St. Louis World's Fair]].<ref>{{cite journal|first=Tatsushi|last=Narita|title=The Young T. S. Eliot and Alien Cultures: His Philippine Interactions|journal=[[The Review of English Studies]]|volume=45|issue=180|date=November 1994|pages=523–525|doi=10.1093/res/XLV.180.523}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|first=Tatsushi|last=Narita|title=T. S. Eliot, The World Fair of St. Louis and "Autonomy"|publisher=Kougaku Shuppan|location=Nagoya, Japan|date=2013|isbn=9784903742212|pages=9–104}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|first=Ronald|last=Bush|chapter=The Presence of the Past: Ethnographic Thinking/ Literary Politics|editor1-first=Elzar|editor1-last=Barkan|editor2-first=Ronald|editor2-last=Bush|title=Prehistories of the Future|publisher=[[Stanford University Press]]|location=Stanford, California|date=1995|pages=3–5; 25–31}}</ref> His interest in [[indigenous peoples]] thus predated his anthropological studies at [[Harvard]].<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Marsh |first1=Alex |last2=Daumer |first2=Elizabeth |date=2005 |title=Pound and T. S. Eliot |magazine=[[American Literary Scholarship]] |page=182}}</ref>

Following graduation from Smith Academy, Eliot attended [[Milton Academy]] in [[Massachusetts]] for a preparatory year, where he met [[Scofield Thayer]], who later published ''[[The Waste Land]]''. He studied at Harvard College from 1906 to 1909, earning a Bachelor of Arts in an elective programme similar to comparative literature in 1909 and a Master of Arts in English literature the following year.<ref name="english.illinois.edu" /><ref name=EB/> Because of his year at Milton Academy, Eliot was allowed to earn his Bachelor of Arts after three years instead of the usual four.<ref>{{Cite book|title=T. S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet, 1888–1922|last=Miller|first=James Edwin|publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press|year=2001|isbn=0271027622|location=State College, Pennsylvania|pages=62}}</ref> [[Frank Kermode]] writes that the most important moment of Eliot's undergraduate career was in 1908 when he discovered [[Arthur Symons]]'s ''[[The Symbolist Movement in Literature]]''. This introduced him to [[Jules Laforgue]], [[Arthur Rimbaud]] and [[Paul Verlaine]]. Without Verlaine, Eliot wrote, he might never have heard of [[Tristan Corbière]] and his book ''Les amours jaunes'', a work that affected the course of Eliot's life.<ref name=Kermode/> ''The Harvard Advocate'' published some of his poems and he became lifelong friends with [[Conrad Aiken]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Davis |first=Garrick |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EckLAQAAMAAJ |title=Praising it New: The Best of the New Criticism |date=2008 |publisher=Swallow Press/Ohio University Press |isbn=978-0-8040-1108-2 |pages=2 |language=en |quote="A year after Eliot moved to London in 1914, he was introduced to Ezra Pound through a mutual friend, Conrad Aiken. Pound and Eliot soon became lifelong friends and literary allies."}}</ref>

After working as a philosophy assistant at Harvard from 1909 to 1910, Eliot moved to Paris where, from 1910 to 1911, he studied philosophy at the [[University of Paris|Sorbonne]]. He attended lectures by [[Henri Bergson]] and read poetry with [[Alain-Fournier|Henri Alban-Fournier]].<ref name=EB/><ref name=Kermode>Kermode, Frank.|author-link=Frank Kermode "Introduction" to ''The Waste Land and Other Poems'', Penguin Classics, 2003.</ref> From 1911 to 1914, he was back at Harvard studying Indian philosophy and [[Sanskrit]].<ref name=EB/><ref>Perl, Jeffry M., and Andrew P. Tuck. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1399046 "The Hidden Advantage of Tradition: On the Significance of T. S. Eliot's Indic Studies"], ''Philosophy East & West'' V. 35, No. 2, April 1985, pp. 116–131.</ref> While a member of the Harvard Graduate School, Eliot fell in love with [[Emily Hale]].<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://tseliot.com/foundation/statement-by-t-s-eliot-on-the-opening-of-the-emily-hale-letters-at-princeton/|title=Statement by T. S. Eliot on the opening of the Emily Hale letters at Princeton|website=T. S. Eliot|date=2 January 2020 |language=en-US|access-date=6 January 2020}}</ref> Eliot was awarded a scholarship to [[Merton College, Oxford]], in 1914. He first visited [[Marburg]], Germany, where he planned to take a summer program, but when the [[First World War]] broke out he went to Oxford instead. At the time so many American students attended Merton that the [[Junior Common Room]] proposed a motion "that this society abhors the [[Americanization]] of Oxford". It was defeated by two votes after Eliot reminded the students how much they owed American culture.<ref name=SeymourJones1>Seymour-Jones, Carole. [http://www.ebooks.com/ebooks/book_display.asp?IID=193222 ''Painted Shadow: The Life of Vivienne Eliot, First Wife of T. S. Eliot'', Knopf Publishing Group, pg. 1]</ref>

Eliot wrote to Conrad Aiken on New Year's Eve 1914: "I hate university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures on the walls [...] Oxford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead."<ref name=SeymourJones1/> Escaping Oxford, Eliot spent much of his time in [[London]]. This city had a monumental and life-altering effect on Eliot for several reasons, the most significant of which was his introduction to the influential American poet [[Ezra Pound]]. A connection through Aiken resulted in an arranged meeting and on 22 September 1914, Eliot paid a visit to Pound's flat. Pound instantly deemed Eliot "worth watching" and was crucial to Eliot's fledgling career as a poet, as he is credited with promoting Eliot through social events and literary gatherings. Thus, according to biographer John Worthen, during his time in England Eliot "was seeing as little of Oxford as possible". He was instead spending long periods of time in London, in the company of Pound and "some of the modern artists whom the war has so far spared [...] It was Pound who helped most, introducing him everywhere."<ref>{{cite book|last=Worthen|first=John| author-link=John Worthen (literary critic)| title=T.S. Eliot: A Short Biography|year=2009|publisher=Haus Publishing|location=London|pages=34–36}}</ref> In the end, Eliot did not settle at Merton and left after a year. In 1915 he taught English at [[Birkbeck, University of London| Birkbeck College, University of London]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbk.ac.uk/about-us/notable-birkbeckians#:~:text=TS%20Eliot%20(1888%2D1965),a%20short%20time%20in%201915.|title=Notable Birkbeckians|website=Birkbeck|access-date=6 February 2023}}</ref>

In 1916, he completed a doctoral dissertation for Harvard on "Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of [[F. H. Bradley]]", but failed to return for the [[Thesis defence|''viva voce'' examination]].<ref name=EB/><ref>For a reading of the dissertation, see {{Cite journal | last=Brazeal | first=Gregory | title=The Alleged Pragmatism of T.S. Eliot  | journal=[[Philosophy and Literature]] | volume=31  | issue=1 | pages=248–264  | date=Fall 2007 | ssrn=1738642}}</ref>