Thomas Stearns Eliot, better known as T.S., was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1888. A superlative intellect, Eliot attended prep school at Milton Academy in Massachusetts in 1905 then entered Harvard University in 1906.

From 1906-1911 the young writer earned a bachelors and masters degree from the prestigious college, even as he spent a year at the Sorbonne in France. In the summer of 1911, Eliot wrote his initial version of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," perhaps his most famous work.

He returned to Harvard to begin work on his doctorate in philosophy in the fall of 1911. On a trip to England as part of a fellowship in 1914, the American met writer Ezra Pound. In 1915, he began making England his permanent home. He later entered the Church of England and assumed British citizenship in 1927.

In addition to Prufrock, Eliot is known for the revolutionary poem, "The Waste Land" published in 1922 and his critical essays, such as those published in "The Sacred Wood" in 1920. Working with Pound and W.B. Yeats, Eliot and his colleagues set new poetic standards for his generation. All of his work demonstrates an imaginative writer who also proved to be a keen commentator on the culture of his time.

In 1948, one year after the death of his former wife Vivien, Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. From 1905 to his death, Eliot would publish more than 600 articles and reviews as well as publish many books that featured collections of his work prior to his death on January 4,1965.

From The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question....
Oh, do not ask, ' What is it? '
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.