_William Greenleaf ELIOT __
_William Greenleaf ELIOT _|
| |_Margaret Greenleaf DAWES _
_Henry Ware ELIOT _________|
| | _William CRANCH ___________
| |_Abigail Adams CRANCH ____|
| |_Nancy GREENLEAF __________
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|--Thomas Stearns ELIOT
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| ___________________________
| __________________________|
| | |___________________________
|_Charlotte Champe STEARNS _|
| ___________________________
|__________________________|
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Graduated from Smith Academy, St. Louis, and Milton Academy, in Massachusetts; Harvard, A.B. 1909. A.M. 1910; studied at University of Paris, 1910-1911; Harvard Graduate School, 1911-1914; Merton College, Oxford, 1914-1915.
Taught at High Wycombe Grammar School, 1915; at Highgate (London) Preparatory School, 1916. In Lloyds Bank Limited (Colonial & Foreign Department, and Head Office), 1917-1925, charged with settlement of pre-war enemy debts of the Bank and its customers; Head of Information Bureau of the Colonial & Foreign Department (1924-1925). Contributed articles on Foreign Exchange Movements to Lloyds Bank Monthly.
Director of Faber & Faber Ltd., publishers (formerly Faber & Gwyer Ltd.) London, since 1925. Editor of "The Criterion," 1922-1939.
President of the Classical Association, 1941-1942; President of the Virgil Society, 1943-1944; President of "Books Across the Sea", President of the Federation Britannique d'Alliance Francaise, 1952- : Vice-President of the Church Union; President, Viewers' and Listeners' Association, 1960- .
Clark Lecturer, Trinity College, Cambridge, 1926; Norton Professor, Harvard, 1932-1933; Boutwell Lecturer, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 1938.
Litt.D. Columbia, Cambridge, Bristol, Leeds, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Washington University (St. Louis), Rome, Sheffield; LL.D. Edinburgh, St. Andrews; D.Litt. Oxford; D.Litt. London; D. es L. Paris, Aix-Marseille, Rennes; D.Phil. Munich; Hon. Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Foreign Member, Accademia dei Lincei, Rome; Fellow in American Letters of the Library of Congress; Foreign Member, Bayerische Akademie der Schonen Kunste (Munich), American Academy-Institute.
Clubs: Oxford and Cambridge (resigned before 1961), Athenaeum, Garrick.
Author of various works published by Faber & Faber Ltd., London, and by Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc., New York, in the following editions: Collected Poems, 1909-1935; Collected Poems 1909-1962, 1963; Selected Essays, 1951; The Idea of a Christian Society, 1939; Practical Cats, 1939; Murder in the Cathedral, 1935; The Familly Reunion, 1939; Four Quartets, 1943; Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, 1948; What is a Classic?, 1944; The Cocktail Party, 1950; Poetry and Drama, 1951; Reunion by Destruction (a pamphlet on the South India Scheme of Church Reunion) published by the D.D.C.P., 1943; The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (published by Faber and by the Harvard University Press), 1933; After Strange Gods (out of print) 1933; The Confidential Clerk, 1954; On Poetry and Poets, 1957; The Elder Statesman, 1959;Knowledge and Experiance in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley, 1964; To Criticize the Critic, 1965.
Contributed introductions to several books, among them: Selected Poems by Ezra Pound, 1928; Selected Poems of Harold Monro (Cobden-Sanderson), 1933; Selected Poems of Marianne Moore (Macmillan of New York, 1935); Poems of Tennyson (Nelson); Wilkie Collin's The Moonstone (Oxford Classics) 1932; Pascal's Pensees (Everyman Library) 1931; Le Serpent of Paul Valery (Cobden-Sanderson, 1924); Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes (Harcourt Brace, 1937); Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (Cresset Press, 1950); The Need for Roots, by Simone Weil (Routledge and Putnums, 1952); Leisure the Basis of Clulture, by Joseph Pieper (Faber and Pantheon, 1952).
Edited: A Choice of Kipling's Verse (Faber, Methuen, 1941); Introducing James Joyce (Faber, 1942).
Nobel Prize for Literature (Stockholm), 1948; decorated Order of Merit, by King George VI, 1948; Officier de la Legion d'Honneur, 1951; Orden Pour le Merite (West Germany), 1951; Hanseatic Goethe Prize (Hamburg), 1955; Dante Medal (Florence), 1959; Commandeur de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres, 1960; Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1964; Posthumous doctorate of Letters, University of Bologna, 1967. He was made an Honorary Citizen of Dallas, Texas; Also honorary Deputy Sheriff of Dallas County (these last honors were submitted by T.S.E. for inclusion in the 1961 edition of the Eliot family book).
Vicar's Warden, St. Stephen's Church, Gloucester Road, London, 1934-1959. A plaque was erected in this church, in his memory, by Valerie Eliot.
Eliot College in the University of Kent, England, was named for him.
The United States Postal Service issued a 22-cent stamp in his honor, in 1986.
From The Family of William Greenleaf Eliot and Abby Adams Eliot, as Chronicled by their Descendants, to 1988 by Henry Eliot Scott (1988)
The following is from Newsweek, December 24, 1962.
"DOUBTING THOMAS"
"By most standards, the New English Bible is a success. A completely new translation, it was the work of 30 anonymous Protestant scholars who labored for thirteen years. In the year since it was published, the NEB has supplanted the 1611 King James Version in many Church of England services and its sales now exceed 4.7 million copies. All this would indicate that the authors had succeeded in their task. This, as one of them put it, was to translate the Bible 'so far as possible, as if it were the work of an English writer for an English public.'
"But, by the standards of one English writer - the greatest poet of his generation - the NEB is a failure. Writing in London's Sunday Telegraph, Thomas Stearns Eliot, a High Anglican, says: 'The age covered by the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I was richer in writers of genius . . . We should not expect a translation made in our time to be a masterpiece of our literature . . . We are, however, entitled to expect from a panel chosen from among the most distinguished scholars of our day at least a work of dignified mediocrity. When we find we are offered something far below that modest level, something which astonishes with its combination of the vulgar, the trivial, and the pedantic, we ask in alarm what is happening to the English language?'
"One of the things that has happened, the St. Louis-born Eliot charges, is that 'Americanisms' - especially in grammatical constructions - have crept into the New English Bible version of Matthew. This evangelist, Eliot writes, 'seems to have been especially unlucky in his translator. The other gospels, however', he adds, 'conform to the same style (or absense of style) in their monotonous inferiority of phrasing.'
"In conclusion, the poet writes: 'It is good that those who aspire to write good English prose or verse should be prepared by study on Greek and Latin. It would also be good if those who have authority to translate a dead language could show understanding and appreciation of their own.'"