T.

S Elliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 26, 1888. He lived in St.
Louis during the first eighteen years of his life and attended Harvard University. In 1910, he left the
United States for the Sorbonne, having earned both undergraduate and masters degrees and having
contributed several poems to the Harvard Advocate.

After a year in Paris, he returned to Harvard to pursue a doctorate in philosophy, but returned to
Europe and settled in England in 1914. The following year, he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood and
began working in London, first as a teacher, and later for Lloyd’s Bank.

It was in London that Eliot came under the influence of his contemporary Ezra Pound, who
recognized his poetic genius at once, and assisted in the publication of his work in a number of
magazines, most notably “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in Poetry in 1915. His first book of
poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917, and immediately established him as
a leading poet of the avant-garde. With the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, now considered by
many to be the single most influential poetic work of the twentieth century, Eliot’s reputation began to
grow to nearly mythic proportions; by 1930, and for the next thirty years, he was the most dominant
figure in poetry and literary criticism in the English-speaking world.

As a poet, he transmuted his affinity for the English metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century
(most notably John Donne) and the nineteenth century French symbolist poets
(including Baudelaire and Laforgue) into radical innovations in poetic technique and subject matter.
His poems in many respects articulated the disillusionment of a younger post–World War I generation
with the values and conventions—both literary and social—of the Victorian era. As a critic also, he
had an enormous impact on contemporary literary taste, propounding views that, after his conversion
to orthodox Christianity in the late thirties, were increasingly based in social and religious
conservatism. His major later poetry collections include Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four
Quartets (1943); his books of literary and social criticism include The Sacred Wood(1920), The Use
of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), After Strange Gods (1934), and Notes Towards the
Definition of Culture (1940). Eliot was also an important playwright, whose verse dramas
include Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party.

He became a British citizen in 1927; long associated with the publishing house of Faber & Faber,
he published many younger poets, and eventually became director of the firm. After a notoriously
unhappy first marriage, Eliot separated from his first wife in 1933, and remarried Valerie Fletcher in
1956. T. S. Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. He died in London on January 4,
1965.

Poetry

Collected Poems (1962)

The Complete Poems and Plays (1952)
Four Quartets (1943)
Burnt Norton (1941)
The Dry Salvages (1941)
East Coker (1940)
Ash Wednesday (1930)
Poems, 1909–1925 (1925)
The Waste Land (1922)
Poems (1919)
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)

Prose

Religious Drama: Mediaeval and Modern (1954)

The Three Voices of Poetry (1954)
Poetry and Drama (1951)
Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1949)
The Classics and The Man of Letters (1942)
The Idea of a Christian Society (1940)
Essays Ancient and Modern (1936)
Elizabethan Essays (1934)
The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933)
After Strange Gods (1933)
John Dryden (1932)
Thoughts After Lambeth (1931)
Tradition and Experimentation in Present-Day Literature(1929)
Dante (1929)
For Lancelot Andrews (1928)
Andrew Marvell (1922)
The Sacred Wood (1920)

Drama

The Elder Statesman (1958)

The Confidential Clerk (1953)
The Cocktail Party (1950)
The Family Reunion (1939)
Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
The Rock (1934)
Sweeney Agonistes (1932)
 Mark Twain

 Born: November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri, United States

 Died: April 21, 1910 in Redding, Connecticut, United States
 Other Names: Clemens, Samuel Langhorne; Clemens, Samuel; Snodgrass, Quentin Curtius; de
Conte, Sieur Louis; Snodgrass, Thomas Jefferson
 Nationality: American
 Occupation: Writer
Mark Twain (1835-1910), American humorist and novelist, captured a world audience with stories of
boyhood adventure and with commentary on man's shortcomings that is humorous even while it
probes, often bitterly, the roots of human behavior.

Bred among American traditions of frontier journalism and influenced by such cracker-box
humorists as Artemus Ward and by the tradition of the tall tale, Mark Twain scored his first successes
as a writer and lecturer with his straight-faced, laconic recitation of incredible comic incidents in
simple, direct, colloquial language. His was an oral style, and his principal contribution is sometimes
thought to be the creation of a genuinely native idiom. Some contemporaries considered Mark
Twain's language uncouth and crude when compared with the well-mannered prose of William Dean
Howells or the intricately contrived expression of Henry James. Though conventionally less
disciplined and less consistently successful than either, Mark Twain surpassed both in popular esteem
and is remembered with them as foremost in the creation of prose fiction in the United States during
the late nineteenth century. In 2010 the first volume of the complete version of Twain's autobiography
was released. A second volume was released in 2013. Two years later, scholars uncovered a number
of published materials written by Twain after combing through old newspaper archives from 150
years ago.

Early Life
Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835, in the frontier village of
Florida, Missouri. He spent his boyhood in nearby Hannibal, on the bank of the Mississippi River,
observing its busy life, fascinated by its romance, but chilled by the violence and bloodshed it bred.
Twelve years old when his lawyer father died, he began working as an apprentice, then a compositor,
with local printers, contributing occasional squibs to local newspapers. At 17 his comic sketch "The
Dandy Frightening the Squatter" was published by a sportsmen's magazine in Boston.

In 1853 Clemens began wandering as a journeyman printer to St. Louis, Chicago, New York, and
Philadelphia, settling briefly with his brother, Orion, in Iowa before setting out at 22 to make his
fortune, he hoped, beside the lush banks of the Amazon River in South America. Instead, traveling
down the Mississippi River, he became a steamboat river pilot until the Civil War interrupted traffic.

Western Years
In 1861 Clemens traveled to Nevada, where he speculated carelessly in timber and silver mining. He
settled down to newspaper work in Virginia City, until his reckless pen and temper brought him into
conflict with local authorities; it seemed profitable to escape to California. Meanwhile he had adopted
the pen name of Mark Twain, a riverman's term for water that was safe, but only just safe, for
navigation.
In San Francisco Mark Twain came under the influence of Bret Harte. Artemus Ward encouraged
Mark Twain to write The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865), which first brought him national
attention. Most of his western writing was hastily, often carelessly, done, and he later did little to
preserve it.
Traveling Correspondent
In 1865 the Sacramento Union commissioned Mark Twain to report on a new excursion
service to Hawaii. His accounts as published in the newspaper provided the basis for his first
successful lectures and years later were collected in Letters from the Sandwich Islands (1938)
and Letters from Honolulu (1939). His travel accounts were so well received that he contracted in
1866 to become a traveling correspondent for the Alta California; he would circle the globe,
dispatching letters. The first step was to travel to New York by ship; his accounts were collected
in Mark Twain's Travels with Mr. Brown (1940).
In June 1867 Mark Twain left New York and went to Europe and the Holy Land, sending
accounts to the California paper and to Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. They were fresh and
racy, alert, informed, and sidesplittingly funny. Their accent was American western humor; their
traditional theme was the decay of transatlantic institutions when compared with the energetic
freshness of the western life-style. Yet the humor also exposed the traveling American innocents as
they haggled through native bazaars, completely innocent of their own outlandish appearance. Nor
was their author exempt from ridicule, for Mark Twain usually wrote of "What fools we mortals be,"
accepting his place among the erring race of man. The letters were later revised as The Innocents
Abroad; or, The New Pilgrim's Progress(1869), and the book immediately made Mark Twain a
popular favorite, in demand especially as a lecturer who could keep large audiences in gales of
laughter.
In 1870 Twain married Olivia Langdon. After a brief residence in upstate New York as an editor and
part owner of the Buffalo Express, he moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where he lived for 20 years;
there his three daughters were born, and prosperity as a writer and lecturer (in England in 1872 and
1873) seemed guaranteed. Roughing It (1872) recounted Mark Twain's travels to Nevada and
reprinted some of the Sandwich Island letters. Neither it, A Tramp Abroad (1880), nor Following the
Equator (1898) had popular or critical reception equal to that of The Innocents Abroad.
Famous Novelist
With Charles Dudley Warner, Mark Twain wrote The Gilded Age (1873), a quizzical satire on
financial speculation and political chicanery, which introduced the character of Colonel Beriah
Sellers, a backcountry squire plagued by schemes that might, but never did, bring him sudden fortune.
By this time Mark Twain was famous. Anything he wrote would sell, but his imagination flagged. He
collected miscellaneous writings into Sketches New and Old (1875) and tried to fit Colonel Sellers
into a new book, which finally materialized years later as The American Claimant (1891).
Meanwhile Mark Twain's account of steamboating experiences for the Atlantic Monthly (1875;
expanded to Life on the Mississippi, 1883) captured the beauty, glamour, and menace of the
Mississippi. Boyhood memories of life beside that river were written into The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer (1875), which immediately attracted young and old. With more exotic and foreign
settings, The Prince and the Pauper (1882) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)
attracted readers also, but The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), in which Mark Twain again
returned to the river scenes he knew best, was considered vulgar by many contemporaries.
"Tom" and "Huck"
Tom Sawyer, better organized than Huckleberry Finn, is a narrative of innocent boyhood play that
inadvertently discovers evil as Tom and Huck witness a murder by Injun Joe in a graveyard at
midnight. The boys run away, are thought dead, but turn up at their own funeral. Tom and Huck
decide to seek out the murderer, and the reward offered for his capture. It is Tom and his sweetheart
who, while lost in a cave, discover the hiding place of Injun Joe. Though the townspeople unwittingly
seal the murderer in the cave, they close the entrance only to keep adventuresome boys like Tom out
of future trouble. In the end, it is innocent play and boyish adventuring that really triumph.
Huckleberry Finn is Mark Twain's finest creation. Huck lacks Tom's imagination; he is a simple boy
with little education. One measure of his character is a proneness to deceit, which seems instinctive, a
trait shared by other wild things and relating him to nature--in opposition to Tom's tradition-grounded,
book-learned, imaginative deceptions. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a loosely strung series of
adventures, can be viewed as the story of a quest for freedom and an escape from what society
requires in exchange for success. Joined in flight by a black companion, Jim, who seeks freedom from
slavery, Huck discovers that the Mississippi is peaceful (though he is found to be only partially
correct) but that the world along its shores is marred by deceit, including his own, and by cruelty and
murder. When the raft on which he and Jim are floating down the river is invaded by two confidence
men, Huck first becomes their assistant in swindles but is finally the agent of their exposure.
Jim throughout is a frightened but faithful friend. Huck is troubled by the sin that in the world's eyes
he is committing by helping a slave to escape. The thematic climax of the book occurs when Huck
decides that if he must go to hell for that sin, very well then, he will go to hell. And he does, as
leaving the river he enters again into the world dominated by Tom, which in its seemingly innocent
deceit presents an alarming analog to adult pretense. All ends suddenly; Jim has been free all the time,
and good people offer to adopt and civilize Huck. But he will have none of it: "I can't stand it," he
says. "I been there before."

Mark Twain, said H. L. Mencken, was the first important author to write "genuinely colloquial and
native American." Huck, who shuns civilization, seems a symbol of simple honesty and conscience.
His boy's-eye view of a world distorted by pretense and knavery anticipates the use of a young
narrator by numerous important American authors, including Sherwood Anderson, Ernest
Hemingway, and J. D. Salinger. Yet Tom, not Huck, seems to have remained Mark Twain's favorite,
giving title to Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894), Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896), and to unpublished tales
later collected in Hannibal, Huck, and Tom (1969).
Unsuccessful Businessman
Mark Twain's early books were sold by subscription; they sold well, for Twain prided himself on
gauging public taste. Many were not issued until subscription agents had secured enough advance
orders to make them surely profitable. As a traveling lecturer, he helped sell his books, and his books
helped pack his lectures. He was probably the best-known and certainly among the most prosperous
writers of his generation. Unsatisfied, he reached for more. When The Prince and the Pauper did not
sell as he thought it should, he established his own publishing firm, which did well for a while.
But Mark Twain was soon in serious trouble. For several years he had been supplying large sums
toward the perfecting of a typesetting machine, convinced that it would make his fortune. But in 1891
he retreated with his family to Europe, where they could live more cheaply. In 1894 the publishing
company went bankrupt, and the typesetter failed in competition with less complex rivals. Mark
Twain was deeply in debt.

Meanwhile, in 1893, Henry Huttleston Rogers, a director of the Standard Oil Company, had assumed
control of Mark Twain's financial affairs. While Mark Twain lectured around the world to pay his
debts, Rogers placated creditors, invested his royalties, and arranged new publishing contracts. The
Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), an awkwardly constructed story of two boys, one of them
African American, switched in their cradles, is sometimes remembered as Mark Twain's second-best
book, but it brought little immediate financial assistance. Personal Recollections of Joan of
Arc (1896), a ponderous paean to innocence triumphant, was so serious that Mark Twain at first
would not allow his name to be associated with it. Following the Equator (1897) was dedicated to
Rogers's son.
Mark Twain and his family remained in Europe, saddened by the death of one daughter and seeking
help for the apparently incurable illness of another. Like his Colonel Sellers, Mark Twain looked
desperately for a scheme to recoup his fortune. Rogers finally steered him out of debt and arranged a
publishing contract that ensured Mark Twain and his heirs a handsome income.

Last Writings
On his return to the United States in 1900, Mark Twain rose to new heights of popularity. His
publicized insistence on paying every creditor had made him something of a public hero. He was
widely sought as a speaker, and he seemed proud to be the genial companion of people like the
Rockefellers and Andrew Carnegie, though in private he opposed the principles for which they
seemed to stand. His writings grew increasingly bitter, especially after his wife's death in 1905. The
Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (1900) exposed corruption in a small, typical American town. King
Leopold's Soliloquy (1905) attacked hypocrisy in treatment of inhabitants of the Congo. What Is
Man? (1906) was a diatribe of despair. Extracts from Adam's Diary (1904) had humorously presented
man as a blunderer; Eve's Diary(1906), written partly in memory of his wife, showed man saved from
bungling only through the influence of a good woman. Many of his later indictments of human
cupidity were, he thought, so severe that they could not be published for 100 years. But when some
appeared in Letters from the Earth (1962), they seemed hardly more bitter than what had appeared
before.
In 1906 Mark Twain began to dictate his autobiography to Albert B. Paine (his literary
executor), recording scattered memories without chronological arrangement. Portions from it were
published in periodicals later that year, but most of the work was not published until long after his
death.Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (1909), a burlesque Mark Twain had puttered over for
years, partly disguised his pessimism with a veneer of rollicking humor as it detailed the low esteem
in which man is held by celestial creatures. With the income from the excerpts of his autobiography,
he built a large house in Redding, Connecticut, which he named Stormfield. There, after several trips
to Bermuda to bolster his waning health, he died on April 21, 1910.

Mark Twain had been working over several drafts of a final bitter book, and from these Paine
and his publisher "edited" The Mysterious Stranger (1916), a volume that William H. Gibson, in
presenting complete texts of versions of the story in Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger
Manuscripts (1969), designated as "an editorial fraud." As scholars worked over the Mark Twain
Papers at the University of California, more volumes containing unpublished writings and
correspondence appeared. His books have been translated into most of the languages of Europe,
where with Theodore Dreiser and Jack London, he is often thought among the best to express, or
expose, the spirit of the American people.

In 2010, 100 years after Twain's death, the University of California Press published the first
volume of the complete version of Twain's autobiography. A second volume appeared in 2013. The
third and final volume was published in 2015. That same year, scholars at the University of
California, Berkeley, uncovered a number of stories Twain had published in the San Francisco
Chronicle (then called the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle) 150 years ago