TS Eliot was born September 6 1888 he was a poet, critic, and editor. Eliot was born Thomas Stearns Eliot in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Henry Ware Eliot he was the youngest of seven children. He attended Smith Academy in St. Louis until he was sixteen. During his last year at Smith he visited the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair he was so inspired he wrote short stories like the Academy Record. In 1905 he departed for a year at Milton a prep school outside Boston to follow his brother Henry to Harvard. Eliot impressed many classmates with his social ease when he began his studies at Harvard in the fall of 1906. He joined a number of clubs, including the literary Signet. He joined the board and was briefly secretary of Harvard's literary magazine, the Advocate. In 1910 and 1911 Eliot copied into a leather notebook the poems that would establish his reputation: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "Portrait of a Lady," "La Figlia Che Piange," "Preludes," and "Rhapsody on a Windy Night. These poems explore the subtleties of the unconscious with a caustic wit. In early spring 1915 Eliot's old Milton Academy and Harvard friend Scofield Thayer introduced Eliot to Vivien Haigh-Wood, a dancer and a friend of Thayer's sister. In June 1915 he married Vivien on impulse at the Hampstead Registry Office. After Vivien died in January 1947, Eliot led a protected life Eliot died of emphysema in London on January 4, 1965. For many years he had had health problems caused by his heavy smoking, and had often been laid low with bronchitis. He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. In accordance with Eliot's wishes, his ashes were taken to St Michael's Church in East Coker, the village from which his ancestors had immigrated to America.