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1888, September

Thomas Stearns Eliot born, St Louis, Missouri.
1898

Enters Smith Academy, St Louis.
1905, April

‘Song’, Eliot’s first poem ‘shown to other eyes’, printed in Smith Academy Record.
1905, June

Delivers the valedictory poem on his graduation from Smith.
1905–1906

Passes a year at Milton Academy, Massachusetts.
1906

Enters Harvard, where he graduates BA 1909, MA 1910.
1908

Discovers the poetry of Jules Laforgue, among others, in Arthur Symons’s The Symbolist Movement in Literature.
1910–1911

Moves to Paris. Studies at the Sorbonne.
1912

Returns to Harvard to pursue philosophy, in particular the idealism of F. H. Bradley.
1912

Meets and falls in love with Emily Hale.
1914, August

Arrives, via Germany, in England, having gained admission to Merton College, Oxford on a travelling fellowship.
1914, September

Meets Ezra Pound
1915, June

‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ published in Poetry.
1915, June

Marries Vivienne Haigh-Wood, the couple having met in March.
1915, July

‘Preludes’ and ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’ published in Wyndham Lewis’s magazine BLAST.
1915, September

A term teaching in High Wycombe is followed by a year at Highgate Junior School.
1917, March

Accepts a position in the Colonial and Foreign Department of Lloyds Bank.
1917, May

Appointed Editorial Assistant at The Egoist.
1917, June

The Egoist Press publishes Prufrock and Other Observations.
1919, January

Death of Eliot’s father.
1919

Poems is published by Hogarth Press; republished with ‘Gerontion’ as Ara Vos Prec.
1919, September–November

‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ printed in The Egoist.
1920, November

First collection of literary criticism, The Sacred Wood, published by Methuen.
1921, September

Recovers from ‘nervous breakdown’ in Margate, then Lausanne, where he completes a draft of The Waste Land.
1922, January

Returns from Switzerland to Paris, where he and Pound work on the poem.
1922, October

First issue of The Criterion, funded by Lady Rothermere. At its centre is The Waste Land.
1925, April

Invited to join the board of Faber & Gwyer, who agree to share financial burden of The Criterion.
1925, November

‘The Hollow Men’ published, part of Poems 1909–1925.
1927, June

Received into the Anglican Church, following a private baptism.
1927, August

‘Journey of the Magi’ published in the first batch of Faber’s ‘Ariel’ Poems.
1927, November

Accepted as a British citizen.
1929, September

Death of Eliot’s mother.
1930

Publication of Ash-Wednesday, begun in December 1927.
1932, September

Departs for America on eight-month lecture-tour.
1932, December

Visits Emily Hale in California.
1933

Begins to arrange a legal separation from Vivienne.
1934, June

First performance of Eliot’s pageant, The Rock.
1935, June

Murder in the Cathedral opens to great acclaim and, in due course, international success.
1936, April

‘Burnt Norton’, the first of Four Quartets, published in Collected Poems 1909–1935.
1938, July

Vivienne is committed to Northumberland House, a private asylum near Finsbury Park.
1939, January

Final issue of The Criterion, with Eliot’s ‘Last Words’.
1939, October

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats is published.
1943, May

Four Quartets published.
1947, January

Vivienne Haigh-Wood dies of a heart attack, aged fifty-eight.
1948, January

Awarded the Order of Merit by George VI.
1948, December

Receives the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1957, January

Marries Valerie Fletcher in a private ceremony, beginning at 6.15 am.
1965, January

T. S. Eliot dies at home in Kensington.

20 December 2016

events

The T. S. Eliot Prize Shortlist Readings

All ten poets shortlisted for the 2016 T. S. Eliot Prize have accepted the invitation to read at the T. S. Eliot Prize Readings. For a fabulous evening of poetry join us at 7pm on Sunday 15 January 2017 in Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. READ