Thomas Stearns Eliot was a distinguished poet, essayist, and playwright, known for his substantial impact on English-language Modernist poetry. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a prominent Boston Brahmin family. Eliot moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25, where he settled, worked, and eventually became a British subject in 1927, renouncing his American citizenship.

Eliot gained widespread recognition with the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", published between 1914 to 1915. This work was initially seen as unconventional. His other notable works include The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), and Four Quartets (1943). Among his plays are Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). In 1948, he was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature for his outstanding contribution to modern poetry.