T. S. Eliot

Prufrock and Other Observations was published in 1917 in a print run of only 500 copies by Egoist Press in London. It features The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, possibly Eliot’s most famous work, a stream-of-consciousness monologue of a man facing insecurity, uncertainty, and his own inertia. Originally written in 1911 and published in 1915 at the encouragement of Ezra Pound, Prufrock is commonly cited as a work marking the start of the modern poetry era. The collection also includes poems like Portrait of a Lady and Rhapsody on a Windy Night -- featuring detailed character studies, observations on the isolation of present-day society, and grappling with post-war disillusionment. - Summary by Elise Dee

Biography:

T. S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot, the 1948 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is one of the giants of modern literature, highly distinguished as a poet, literary critic, dramatist, and editor and publisher. In 1910 and 1911, while still a college student, he wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and other…

poetryfoundation.org

More on T. S. Eliot by Louis Menand in the New York Review of Books (paywalled):

How Eliot Became Eliot

In the summer of 1910, when he was twenty-two, T.S. Eliot bought a notebook at a bookstore in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he was vacationing with his

nybooks.com

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