T.S. Eliot

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Tom & Viv
Miramax Films presents a Samuelson Productions Harvey Kass and IRS Media Inc. production with the participation of British Screen ; distributed by Buena Vista Home Video.
[S.l.] : Miramax Home Entertainment ; Burbank, Calif. : Buena Vista Home Video (distributor), c1994.
  1. VHS; stereo.
  2. Rated PG-13.
  3. Closed captioned.
  4. Willem Dafoe, Miranda Richardson.
  5. Executive producers, Miles A. Copeland III and Paul Colichman ; screenplay, Michael Hastings and Adrian Hodges ; costume designer, Phoebe De Gaye ; production designer, Jamie Leonard ; music composed and conducted by Debbie Wiseman ; film editor, Tony Lawson ; director of photography, Martin Fuhrer ; line producer, John Kay ; executive producers, Miles A. Copeland, Paul Couchman.
  6. Videocassette release of the 1994 motion picture.
  7. From container: This film has been modifiedfrom its original version. It has been formatted to fit your TV.
  8. Tom & Viv tells the story of the passionate yet turbulent relationship between T.S. Eliot and his wife, Vivienne. Although she was the inspiration for his greatest works, Eliot finally had to make a choice between standing by the emotionally troubled Vivienne and letting her go.
     
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Eliot and his age : T.S. Eliot's moral imagination in the twentieth century
Russell Kirk.
Wilmington, Del. : ISI Books, c2008.
Kirk's (1918-94) biography shows how American-born British poet Eliot (1888-1965) inherited and perpetuated a conservative tradition centuries old. It first appeared in 1971, and is reprinted here from the 1984 revised edition published by Sherwood Sugden and Company, which has been out of print for many years. Benjamin G. Lockerd (English language and literature, Grand Valley State U.) contributes a new introduction and a postscript. Annotation #169;2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
     
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Discovering modernism : T.S. Eliot and his context
Louis Menand.
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007.
When Discovering Modernism was first published, it shed new and welcome light on the birth of Modernism. This reissue of Menand's classic intellectual history of T.S. Eliot and the singular role he played in the rise of literary modernism features an updated Afterword by the author, as well asa detailed critical appraisal of the progression of Eliot's career as a poet and critic. The new Afterword was adapted from Menand's critically lauded essay on Eliot in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Volume Seven: Modernism and the New Criticism. Menand shows how Eliot's early views onliterary value and authenticity, and his later repudiation of those views, reflect the profound changes regarding the understanding of literature and its significance that occurred in the early part of the twentieth century. It will prove an eye-opening study for readers with an interest in thewritings of T.S. Eliot and other luminaries of the Modernist era.
     
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T.S. Eliot
Craig Raine.
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2006.
In this brilliant exploration of T.S. Eliot's work, prize-winning poet Raine reveals that an implicit controlling theme--the buried life, or the failure of feeling--unfolds in surprisingly varied ways throughout Eliot's work. He illuminates the paradoxical Eliot--an exacting anti-romantic realist, skeptical of the emotions, yet incessantly troubled by the fear of emotional failure.
     

T.S. Eliot is likely the best known literary figure to have been born in St. Louis (in 1888).  His grandfather came from Harvard Divinity School and founded Washington University.  Both sides of the family took pride in their New England roots. 

St. Louis was where Eliot came from, but he was never very clear on where he belonged.  In later life he became an Anglican and a British subject and resident.  His writing grew out of world literature and most specifically, English literature, but its shape owes much to where he grew up.  Eliot said of his work “in its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America.”

Eliot’s poetry and criticism made him a giant in the world of letters.  The Wasteland became the symbol of its generation-even its title was definitively evocative.  The wide-ranging creative approach that drew from many distinct times and cultures struck a responsive chord with contemporary readers.  Eliot’s towering reputation was confirmed when he was awarded, at the age of sixty, the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In 1939, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a collection of whimsical poems Eliot had written for his young godchildren, was published.  This slim, uncharacteristic volume was later reworked into the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical Cats, which in 1997 became the longest-running Broadway show ever.

Cats, the musical

Locally, Eliot has not gotten as much recognition as he might deserve.  The house he was born in (2635 Locust St.) was torn down and became a phone company parking lot.  In the ‘70’s, sculptor Andrew Osze was commissioned to create a memorial plaque, which was eventually given a home at the St. Louis Public Library.

Article by: St. Louis Public Library staff.