T.S. Eliot was one of the great poets in the English language during the twentieth century. He grew up in St. Louis and after graduating from college, moved to England. He loved his new country so much that he eventually became a subject of the English king. He wrote noted poems and plays over his lifespan. He also worked as a banker and as an editor for a publishing firm.
The author of this biography (Peter Ackroyd) is an Englishman who is one of the great historians of our time. Compared to his later writings on a multi-volume history of England, this relatively early work seems relatively superficial. It describes a poet of great emotion and depth in relatively simple terms. Perhaps this is due to Eliot’s nature, but surely some of it is due to Ackroyd’s youth. Fortunately for us, Ackroyd grew as a writer as he aged, and his writing on the history of England is simply majestic. Nonetheless, this work on Eliot was obviously written in Ackroyd’s youth.
What is this book’s value? Anyone who reads Murder in the Cathedral, Notes on a Christian Culture, The Waste Land, or anything else written by T.S. Eliot will wonder what sort of a human being produced such varied and ingenious works as these. Ackroyd’s biography will elucidate such curiosities. It peaks beneath the curtain into Eliot’s personal life. It brings to light his two marriages, his friendships, his religious conversion, his love of England, and his intellectual development in stark terms. Eliot’s story is well-researched as demonstrated by the comprehensive bibliography.
As told in this biography, Eliot was often asked what such-and-such a line in his poetry “meant” – as if there were some simple symbology at play. Eliot usually demurred and left the questioner wondering. Despite its shortcomings, this tale fills in some of those questions. It does not give us a definitive word on what opaque works like The Waste Land “truly mean” (if there is an answer to that question at all). Instead, it helps us see clearly the creative person behind the works, and it fulfills that job quite well.
T.S. Eliot A Life
by Peter Ackroyd
Copyright (c) 1984
Simon and Schuster
ISBN13 9780140171129
Genre: Literary Biography
Page Count: 400
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