James E. Jr. Miller T. S. Eliot. The Making of an American Poet, 1888-1922

Late in his life T. S. Eliot, when asked if his poetry belonged in the tradition of American literature, replied: "I'd say that my poetry has obviously more in common with my distinguished contemporaries in America than with anything written in my generation in England. That I'm sure of. . . . In its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America." In T. S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet, James Miller offers the first sustained account of Eliot's early years, showing that the emotional springs of his poetry did indeed come from America.Born in 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, T. S. Eliot grew up along the Mississippi River, only a few miles down river from Hannibal, the boyhood home of another great American writer, Mark Twain. Miller recounts Eliot's early years in St. Louis schools and follows him in the summers as he vacationed with his family in their Gloucester, Massachusetts, home perched on the Atlantic Ocean's edge. In 1905 at the age of seventeen, Eliot left the Midwest for what would prove to be a lasting separation-attending Milton Academy in Massachusetts for one year and then Harvard for nine years, as an undergraduate and as a graduate student in philosophy. The first time he ventured abroad was 1910, when he spent a crucial year studying in Paris and forming a deep friendship with the Frenchman Jean Verdenal. It was not until 1914, when Eliot was 26 years old, that he left America for England-and found reasons to stay th...