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T. S. Eliot is considered by many to be a literary genius and one of the most influential men of letters during the half-century after World War I. He was born on September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri. Eliot attended Harvard University, with time abroad pursuing graduate studies at the Sorbonne, Marburg, and Oxford. The outbreak of World War I prevented his return to the United States, and, persuaded by Ezra Pound to remain in England, he decided to settle there permanently. He published his influential early criticism, much of it written as occasional pieces for literary periodicals. He developed such doctrines as the "dissociation of sensibility" and the "objective correlative" and elaborated his views on wit and on the relation of tradition to the individual talent. Eliot by this time had left his early, derivative verse far behind and had begun to publish avant-garde poetry (including "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), which exploited fresh rhythms, abrupt juxtapositions, contemporary subject matter, and witty allusion. This period of creativity also resulted in another collection of verse (including "Gerontian") and culminated in The Waste Land, a masterpiece published in 1922 and produced partly during a period of psychological breakdown while married to his wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot. In 1922, Eliot became a director of the Faber & Faber publishing house, and in 1927 he became a British citizen and joined the Church of England. Thereafter, his career underwent a change. With the publication of Ash Wednesday in 1930, his poetry became more overtly Christian. As editor of the influential literary magazine The Criterion, he turned his hand to social as well as literary criticism, with an increasingly conservative orientation. His religious poetry culminated in Four Quartets, published individually from 1936 onward and collectively in 1943. This work is often considered to be his greatest poetic achievement. Eliot also wrote poetry in a much lighter vein, such as Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939), a collection that was used during the early 1980s as the basis for the musical, Cats. In addition to his contributions in poetry and criticism, Eliot is the pivotal verse dramatist of this century. He followed the lead of William Butler Yeats in attempting to revive metrical language in the theater. But, unlike Yeats, Eliot wanted a dramatic verse that would be self-effacing, capable of expressing the most prosaic passages in a play, and an insistent, undetected presence capable of elevating itself at a moment's notice. His progression from the pageant The Rock (1934) and Murder in the Cathedral (1935), written for the Canterbury Festival, through The Family Reunion (1939) and The Cocktail Party (1949), a West End hit, was thus a matter of neutralizing obvious poetic effects and bringing prose passages into the flow of verse. Recent critics have seen Eliot as a divided figure, covertly attracted to the very elements (romanticism, personality, heresy) he overtly condemned. His early attacks on romantic poets, for example, often reveal him as a romantic against the grain. The same divisions carry over into his verse, where violence struggles against restraint, emotion against order, and imagination against ironic detachment. This Eliot is more human and more attractive to contemporary taste. During his lifetime, Eliot received many honors and awards, including the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948. (Bowker Author Biography) — biography from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats… (more)
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats 6,483 copies, 88 reviews
The Waste Land and Other Poems (Author) 4,431 copies, 32 reviews
Four Quartets 3,178 copies, 40 reviews
Murder in the Cathedral 2,984 copies, 31 reviews
Collected Poems, 1909–1962 2,950 copies, 22 reviews
Selected Poems 2,840 copies, 11 reviews
Complete Poems and Plays,: 1909-1950 1,636 copies, 10 reviews
The Complete Poems and Plays 1,041 copies, 4 reviews
The Waste Land 1,002 copies, 24 reviews
The Cocktail Party 842 copies, 7 reviews
Christianity and Culture 570 copies, 4 reviews
Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot 529 copies, 1 review
Selected Essays 379 copies
On Poetry and Poets 358 copies, 2 reviews
The Sacred Wood 335 copies, 7 reviews
Collected Poems, 1909–1935 333 copies, 2 reviews
The Family Reunion 296 copies, 1 review
Eliot: Poems 230 copies, 3 reviews
Prufrock and Other Observations 223 copies, 6 reviews
The Waste Land and Other Poems 222 copies, 2 reviews
The Confidential Clerk 202 copies, 2 reviews
The Idea of a Christian Society 141 copies, 3 reviews
Cats: The Book of the Musical 116 copies, 1 review
Selected essays, 1917-1932 98 copies, 1 review
The Elder Statesman 98 copies, 2 reviews
The Waste Land & Four Quartets 82 copies, 4 reviews
Collected Plays 65 copies, 1 review
Poems 1909-1925 50 copies
Ash Wednesday 42 copies
The Hollow Men 40 copies, 2 reviews
Little Gidding 33 copies
Dante 31 copies
Poems 31 copies, 3 reviews
Burnt Norton 29 copies
Poetry and Drama 27 copies, 1 review
East Coker 24 copies
Dikter i svensk tolkning 18 copies, 1 review
Elizabethan essays 16 copies, 1 review
Journey of the Magi 15 copies, 2 reviews
George Herbert 15 copies
Die Dramen 15 copies
Opere 1904-1939 14 copies
TEATRE 14 copies
Preludes 13 copies
Gedichten 12 copies, 1 review
La terra eixorca 11 copies, 1 review
Points of View 11 copies
Milton 10 copies
Poesie 9 copies
Opere 6 copies
La sorella velata 6 copies, 1 review
Vier kwartetten 5 copies, 1 review
Marina 5 copies
Select Poems 5 copies
Animula 5 copies, 1 review
Valik esseid 4 copies
Om kritik 3 copies
The Poems of T. S. Eliot 3 copies, 1 review
Dikter 3 copies
Poems: The Waste Land und weitere Gedichte (Author; Narrator) 2 copies
Corak Ülke 2 copies
Ensaios 2 copies
TheWaste Land (Author) 2 copies
Teatro 2 copies
Ara vus prec 2 copies, 1 review
Poezi të zgjedhura 1 copy, 1 review
Poemas 1 copy
tin house 1 copy
Water 1 copy
Pesmi 1 copy
Two poems 1 copy
Der Vers. 1 copy
Le opere 1 copy
The Rock 1 copy
Stücke 1 copy
Memoir 1 copy
Denemeler 1 copy
Pensees 1 copy
Poesia 1 copy
Песни 1 copy
The Moonstone (Introduction, some editions) 10,463 copies, 246 reviews
The Eight (Contributor) 4,793 copies, 134 reviews
Pensées (Introduction, some editions) 4,680 copies, 34 reviews
Look to Windward (Contributor) 4,008 copies, 74 reviews
Nightwood (Introduction, some editions) 3,028 copies, 57 reviews
Awakenings (Contributor, some editions) 2,384 copies, 24 reviews
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (Author) 2,033 copies, 102 reviews
The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (Contributor) 1,213 copies, 9 reviews
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (Contributor, some editions) 897 copies, 7 reviews
The Crack-Up (Contributor) 897 copies, 10 reviews
The Best American Essays of the Century (Contributor) 754 copies, 4 reviews
Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas (Contributor) 728 copies, 11 reviews
The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind… (Introduction, some editions) 625 copies, 8 reviews
The Nation's Favourite Poems (Contributor) 611 copies, 7 reviews
In Parenthesis (Introduction, some editions) 602 copies, 13 reviews
Critical Theory Since Plato (Contributor, some editions) 391 copies, 1 review
Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (Editor, some editions) 391 copies, 3 reviews
The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: A Poetry Anthology (Contributor) 381 copies, 3 reviews
Literature: The Human Experience (Contributor) 332 copies
The Faber Book of Modern Verse (Contributor, some editions) 281 copies, 2 reviews
The Lure of the Limerick (Contributor) 270 copies, 7 reviews
The Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse (Contributor, some editions) 260 copies, 3 reviews
The Literary Cat (Contributor) 239 copies
Intimate Journals (Introduction, some editions) 234 copies, 1 review
The Wheel of Fire: Interpretations of Shakespearian Tragedy (Introduction, some editions) 230 copies, 2 reviews
Criticism: Major Statements (Contributor) 210 copies
The Portable Conservative Reader (Contributor) 208 copies, 1 review
My Brother's Keeper: James Joyce's Early Years (Introduction, some editions; Preface) 192 copies
American Religious Poems: An Anthology (Contributor) 159 copies, 1 review
Vampires, Wine, and Roses (Contributor) 151 copies, 2 reviews
Anabasis (Translator, some editions) 151 copies, 2 reviews
Cats [1998 film] (Original story) 133 copies
American Wits: An Anthology of Light Verse (Contributor) 130 copies, 3 reviews
The Art of Poetry (Introduction, some editions) 126 copies
A Comprehensive Anthology of American Poetry (Contributor) 125 copies, 2 reviews
Major British Writers, Volumes I and II (Contributor) 121 copies, 1 review
The Imagist Poem (Contributor, some editions) 98 copies
Twentieth-Century American Poetry (Contributor) 93 copies, 2 reviews
Bubu of Montparnasse (Foreword, some editions) 79 copies, 1 review
Selected Poems {Eliot} (Editor; Introduction) 78 copies
The Walt Whitman Reader (Contributor, some editions) 69 copies
Selected Poems: Edwin Muir (Editor, some editions) 67 copies
Contemporary Drama: 15 Plays (Contributor) 67 copies, 1 review
The Gender of Modernism: A Critical Anthology (Contributor) 62 copies, 1 review
Cats: Original 1982 Broadway Cast Recording (Original book) 61 copies, 1 review
Four Modern Verse Plays (Contributor) 54 copies, 1 review
Lament for the Makers: A Memorial Anthology (Contributor) 49 copies, 1 review
The Ecopoetry Anthology (Contributor) 44 copies, 1 review
Introducing James Joyce (Introduction) 42 copies
Selected Poems (Introduction, some editions) 41 copies
A Quarto of Modern Literature (Contributor) 38 copies
The Book of the Sea (Contributor) 36 copies
Shakespeare: Othello (Contributor) 35 copies
The Queen's Book of the Red Cross (Contributor) 32 copies, 1 review
Cats: Original 1981 London Cast Recording (Original book) 25 copies, 1 review
Praising It New: The Best of the New Criticism (Contributor) 22 copies, 1 review
Classic Essays in English (Contributor) 22 copies
Collected Poems (Translator) 20 copies
A little book of modern verse (Preface) 14 copies
Nobel Writers on Writing (Contributor) 14 copies
The Dark Side of the Moon (Preface) 11 copies
Poems and Verse Plays (Introduction, some editions) 10 copies
Conservative Texts: An Anthology (Contributor) 8 copies
Perspectives on poetry (Contributor) 7 copies
The London Omnibus (Contributor) 6 copies
Garland for John Donne, 1631-1931 (Contributor, some editions) 6 copies
Kipling and the Critics (Contributor) 6 copies
Poetry anthology (Contributor, some editions) 6 copies
Britain at War (Contributor) 6 copies
An Examination of Ezra Pound (Contributor, some editions) 5 copies
Poems Of Tennyson With An Introduction By T.S. Eliot (Introduction, some editions) 4 copies
John Davidson : A selection of his poems (Introduction, some editions) 3 copies
Bruin's Midnight Reader (Contributor, some editions) 3 copies
This American World (Introduction, some editions) 2 copies
Fishermen of the Banks (Introduction, some editions) 1 copy
Savonarola : A Dramatic Poem (Introduction, some editions) 1 copy

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