T.S. Eliot Trivia

1. Whom did T.S. Eliot marry in 1957?

From Quiz T.S. Eliot: His Life and Works 1930-1965

Answer: Esmé Valerie Fletcher

Eliot and Vivienne separated in 1933, and she was admitted to a psychiatric ward in 1938, apparently committed by her brother Maurice. She lived out the rest of her days there, dying in 1947. Eliot remarried in 1957, with Esmé. Although his time with Vivienne was miserable, he never considered divorce because of his Anglican beliefs.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: Thomas Stearns

Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965) was a poet, dramatist and literary critic.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot: His Life and Works 1930-1965

Answer: Collin Brooks

Collin Brooks (CB) (1893-1959) was a journalist, writer and broadcaster with an enormous circle of friends. Eliot - a long-time family friend - spoke at his memorial service in 1959.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: St. Louis, Missouri

Lexington, Massachusetts was where Eliot's parents were married. New Bedford, Massachusetts was where his grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, was born. Jefferson City is the state capital of Missouri; it has no real correlation to Eliot.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: Smith Academy

Eliot attended Smith Academy from 1898 to 1905. The Smith Academy is a preparatory school for Washington University (not Washington Academy).

From Quiz T.S. Eliot: His Life and Works 1930-1965

Answer: John Davy Hayward

Eliot and Hayward were good friends, and during these years, Hayward was in charge of Eliot's pieces. Upon their separation, Hayward kept some of the pieces and bequeathed them to the University of Cambridge in 1965, on his death from muscular dystrophy, which was only a few months after Eliot's.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: Harvard

Eliot attended Harvard University from 1906 to 1909 (during which time he obtained a BA) and earned a Master's Degree the following year. Upon World War I, Eliot moved to England where he spent much time studying, as well as meeting and marrying his wife Vivienne. Also during that time, he'd been working on his dissertation and finally submitted it to Harvard in 1916. Despite the fact that it had been accepted, Eliot had not received his Ph.D because he wasn't present to defend it.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot: His Life and Works 1930-1965

Answer: Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley

Submitted in 1916, the dissertation was approved but Eliot didn't get his Ph.D at that time because he failed to be present to defend it. "On Poetry and Poets" (1957), "Notes Toward the Definition of Culture" (1948), and "The Idea of a Christian Society" (1939) were all publications of his throughout his life.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: Merton

Eliot attended Merton in 1914, but was unhappy and refused to further his education there.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Champe Stearnes

Samuel Eliot, Elizabeth Greenleaf, William Greenleaf Eliot, Abigail Adams Cranch, Thomas Lamb Eliot, and Henrietta Robins Mack are all related to T.S. Eliot from his genealogy.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot: His Life and Works 1930-1965

Answer: 22 cents

Eliot was placed on a 22 cent stamp in the US in 1986. Eliot would have been 98 years old at this time. The 15 cent stamp was the cost in 1980, the 25 cent stamp in 1990, and the 29 cent stamp in 1994.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: Ezra Pound

The magazine "Poetry : A Magazine of Verse" published the poem in June 1915, at the request of Ezra Pound (who was the foreign editor of the magazine). Pound became a mentor and lifelong friend of Eliot. The other poets were all contributors to the magazine.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot: His Life and Works 1930-1965

Answer: Little Gidding

Published in 1942, "Little Gidding" is the last of the four pieces, which represents fire. "Burnt Norton" (1935) represents air, and it is the first of the four pieces. Following that, "East Coker" (1940) represents earth, and the third of the series is "The Dry Salvages" (1941), which represents water.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: "I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is also referred to as "Prufrock". It was this poem that turned Eliot into what he ultimately became; one of the most influential poets of his time. A few of the well known poets that influenced Eliot includes Homer, Ezra Pound, and Dante Alighieri (better known as Dante, from "Dante's Inferno", "Purgatorio", etc.)

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: Vivienne Haigh-Wood

Tom and Vivienne were married on June 26, 1915. He married Esme on January 10, 1957. Joan Aiken was the daughter of his great friend Conrad Aiken. Dora Black was married to Bertrand Russell, who had a brief affair with Vivienne.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot: His Life and Works 1930-1965

Answer: Gerald Kelly

Sir Gerald Kelly (1879-1972) was a noted portrait artist (and president of the Royal Academy) who was over 80 at the time and rather ill so the last sittings had to be cancelled. Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was a Canadian born British humourist and painter, a friend of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, and painted Eliot in 1930 and 1949. Patrick Heron (1920-1999) was an English painter and designer whose abstract expressionist painting of Eliot was used on the 150th National Gallery commemorative stamp (1 of 10) issued on 18 July 2006. Powys Evans (1899-1981) was a caricaturist (known as "Quiz") who produced cartoons of many famous people including Eliot.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: Dover Beach

Written in 1927, "The Journey of The Magi" is quite the opposite of what it sounds like - it was miserable and full of hatred. The poem was published in Eliot's "Ariel Poems" in 1930.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot: His Life and Works 1930-1965

Answer: Sir Alec Guinness

Sir Alec Guinness (1914-2000) was a celebrated stage and movie actor. He had already achieved some notable successes both on stage and on screen as well as serving in the Royal Navy during World War 2, where he commanded a landing craft during the invasion of Sicily.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: John Betjeman

Eliot taught Betjeman during World War I. Hopkins, the great Victorian writer, also attended Highgate as did Barfield, who influenced Eliot, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and others. Philip Stanhope Worsley also attended Highgate and was the first translator of "The Odyssey" and "The Iliad" (into English).

From Quiz T.S. Eliot: His Life and Works 1930-1965

Answer: Alan Rawsthorne

Alan Rawsthorne (1905-1971) was a British composer he wrote the music for "Practical Cats" in 1954, an overture and six of the poems, voiced by Robert Donat, is available and much preferable to the laboriously inept musical it spawned.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: Ezra Pound

At the very beginning is written "For Ezra Pound - il miglior fabbro." That translates into "the better craftsman". Eliot and Joyce were friends, and "The Wasteland" was considered to be a counterpart of Joyce's "Ulysses", published in the same year. W.H. Auden (an Anglo-American poet) and William Yeats (an Irish poet and dramatist) had both been influenced by Eliot.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: Anglican

On June 29 he converted to Anglicanism and in November he became a British citizen. Also, he decided to drop his American citizenship (during November). In 1928, Eliot summarized his beliefs when he wrote in the preface to his book, "For Lancelot Andrewes", that "the general point of view may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo catholic in religion."

From Quiz T.S. Eliot: His Life and Works 1930-1965

Answer: East Coker

"In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning" are the lines along with "Of your charity pray for the repose of the soul of Thomas Sterns Eliot, Poet 26 September 1888 - 4 January 1965". The church of St. Michaels is in East Coker, Somerset, England."

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: Old Possum

"Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" is an assortment of Eliot's poems about feline psychology and sociology. A second edition was published in the early 80s that featured illustrations.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot: His Life and Works 1930-1965

Answer: Logan's Run

"The Naming of Cats" (in an abridged version) from "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" is quoted by "The Old Man" played by Peter Ustinov.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: F. H. Bradley

Although Eliot submitted the thesis to Harvard in 1915, he didn't get the Ph.D because he wasn't present to defend it. "Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley" was eventually published in 1964. Thomas Hill Green and Bernard Bosanquet were both British idealist philosophers, and Georg Hegel was an influence upon their writings.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: Gerontion

"Gerontion" is a poem by Eliot that was published in 1920. Eliot scholar Grover Smith made a comment of this poem that quotes, "If any notion remained that in the poems of 1919 Eliot was sentimentally contrasting a resplendent past with a dismal present, "Gerontion" should have helped to dispel it." Despite this, the poem is still regarded as antisemitic and harsh Eliot critics have never considered the poem as anything like what has Smith commented.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot: His Life and Works 1930-1965

Answer: Willem Dafoe

Willem Dafoe plays Tom Eliot to Miranda Richardson's Viv; Tim Dutton plays Maurice Haigh-Wood (her brother); Nickolas Grace plays Bertrand Russell and John Savident plays Sir Frederick Lamb.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: Murder in the Cathedral

Eliot had a brief voice segment as a tempter. The movie itself cannot be acquired, but there is a copy in the British Film Institute, yet getting ahold of it isn't the easiest task in the world.

From Quiz T.S. Eliot : His Life and Works 1888-1929

Answer: Harvard Advocate

Several poems and 'songs' were printed in "The Advocate" between 1906 and 1913, including "Circe's Palace", "Before Morning", "Humouresque", and "Spleen".

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