tic technique and
             subject matter" (T.S. pg). Eliot's work seemed to speak the
             disillusionment of a "younger post-World War I generation with the values
             and conventions, both literary and social, of the Victorian era" (T.S. pg).
             Moreover, as a critic, Eliot had an enormous influence on the contemporary
             literary taste, expressing views that were based in social and religious
             Other major poems include, Ash Wednesday,' and Four Quartets,' and his
             plays include, Murder in the Cathedral,' The Family Reunion,' and The
             Cocktail Party,' (T.S. pg). Eliot's books of literary and social criticism
             are The Sacred Wood,' The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism,' After
             Strange Gods,' and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture' (T.S. pg). In
             1922, Eliot founded the literary journal, Criterion,' and remained editor
             for seventeen years (Thomas pg). He also served as director of the London
             publisher, Faber & Faber, from 1925 until his death in 1965 (Thomas pg).
             Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.
             Eliot's first marriage ended in 1933 and he remarried in 1956 to
             Valerie Fletcher (T.S. pg). No one knows exactly what went wrong with his
             first marriage, however, even after her heath in 1947 while in a mental
             institution, Eliot "appeared to remain celibate until at the age of 69"
             when he married his secretary, Valerie Fletcher, surprising even his
             Yet, as Phoebe Pettingell points out in her article Eliot's Secret Life,'
             "speculation about these events cannot be dismissed as mere prurience" for
             "the themes of The Waste Land' appear to revolve around Vivien," although
             it is dedicated to the memory of a young Frenchman who was killed at sea
             during World War II (Pettingell pg). Eliot wrote most of the poem while
             recuperating at a Swiss spa after his separation from V
             ...