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 there permanently, becoming   a British citizen in 1927.    Miller challenges long-held assumptions about Eliot's poetry and his life.   Eliot himself always maintained that his poems were not based on personal   experience, and thus should not be read as personal poems. But Miller   convincingly combines a reading of the early work--from his earliest poems   through 1922, the year The Waste Land was published--with careful   analysis of surviving early correspondence, accounts from Eliot's friends   and acquaintances, and new scholarship that delves into Eliot's Harvard   years. Ultimately, Miller demonstrates that Eliot's poetry is filled with   reflections of his personal experiences: his relationships with family,   friends, and wives; his sexuality; his intellectual and social development;   his influences.    Publication of T. S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet marks a   milestone in Eliot scholarship. At last we have a balanced portrait of the   poet and the man, one that takes seriously his American roots. In the   process, we gain a fuller appreciation for some of the best-loved poetry of   the twentieth century. Eliot may have lived most of his life abroad, but he   was and continued to be an American poet.

T.S. Eliot: The Making Of An American Poet, 1888-1922 PDF

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