T.S. Eliot
Thomas Sterns Eliot was born in St. Louis Missouri on September 26, 1888. When he was eighteen he went to Harvard University. After he graduated, he went on to teach at an all boy's school in Lloyds Bank In London. At the age of 37 he entered book publishing. King George VI awarded him with The Order of Merit in 1948. Later that year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. When he died in 1965, he was a director of the English firm Faber and Faber.
During his writing career he wrote many series of poems such as Prufrock, The Waste Land, Four Quartets, Ariel Poems, Old Possum's Book Of Practical Cats , as well as dramas such as Murder in the Cathedral. Every poem and drama was written from one of Eliot's many emotions. The Waste Land, for instance, explores many aspects of human experience, including thought and emotion and the events that come through out life. It deals with such issues as sexisium, loneliness, death and destruction. The Waste Land , was one of the most powerful and inspiring poems that have been written in this century.
T.S. Eliot's drama, Murder in the Cathedral, was the turning point in English dramas. Much of it's "newness" was due to Eliot's return to the very beginnings of drama. Eliot was always aware of literary tradition. As a in Greek Tragedies, the language conveys most of the action. The focus of attention is on Eliot's mind, which is the real center of the play's action.
His book, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, was the bases for the Broadway musical, CATS. Step by step, with Andrew Lloyd Webber, a world renowned composer, the musical came together. The song Memory, was actually not included in that collection of poems. After his death, his wife found the poem entitled, Memory, gave it to Webber, and now it is the most memorable song of the show.