T.S. Eliot - British or American Poet?

Modernist poet T.S. Eliot is claimed as a cultural figure on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. You can find his name in both the course guide for British literature and for American literature.

Though there is no question as to what artistic movement he belongs to (modernism), there is considerable confusion as to which country has a right to claim him for its own.

The fact is T.S. Eliot was born in the United States and grew up between the east coast and the Midwest. His grandfather founded Washington University in Missouri.

Eliot studied for his undergraduate degree at Harvard then hopped over the water to finish his studies in France and England, where he would make a home for the rest of his life.

Biographically, T.S. Eliot did live a divided life which bears claims from both sides of the Atlantic. Poetically, there is an argument to be made that Eliot's career and his poetry were more English and European than American.

Biographical Life

Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri in America's Midwest. He lived and studied in the United States for roughly the first two decades of his life. His family was indeed American.

In 1927, Eliot became a British citizen. It was in England where Eliot lived for the majority of his life, working as a teacher, bank clerk, editor and writer.

From this sketch of T.S. Eliot's biography we can see reason for both the United States and England to claim the poet.

Poetic Life

The Nobel Prize winning poet did not publish much poetry while living in the United States. It was only after he came of age on the cobblestone streets of England that he began his poetic project in earnest, engaging ancient themes while suffering the modern crises of historical breaks, cultural ennui, and decomposition of faith.

The poem that is regarded the real debut of Eliot's poetic powers, "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" was published in 1915 - six years after Eliot had graduated from Harvard and emmigrated to the Old World.

All of T.S. Eliot's major work as a critic, editor and poet took place on the English side of the Atlantic. "The Waste Land" and "Four Quartets" were written and inspired by a life that is much closer to the vaunted halls of a romantic Europe than the wild soil of America.

Books of criticism have been written examining the "Americanness" of Eliot's poetry in its themes and inspirations.

These books offer an argument that seems to work defensively to contradict the powerful assumption of Eliot being rightfully considered as British.

A very telling comment on Eliot's nationality (as that status might be said to go beyond the merely biographical and touch upon something metaphysical) can be found in the 1948 Nobel Prize presentation speech given by Anders Osterling:

_{Externally, too, the now sixty-year-old Eliot has also returned to Europe, the ancient and storm-tossed, but still venerable, home of cultural traditions. Born an American, he comes from one of the Puritan families who emigrated from England at the end of the seventeenth century. His years of study as a young man at the Sorbonne, at Marburg, and at Oxford, clearly revealed to him that at bottom he felt akin to the historical milieu of the Old World, and since 1927 Mr. Eliot has been a British subject^.}

We can take this last remark to have a double meaning. Eliot became a British subject and citizen and in doing so his poetry became absorbed into British Literature, a subject for study, and debate.