After reading some of Eliot's work, I've decided to look into what influenced him to write. He went to Harvard in 1906. There, he was influenced by the anti-Romanticism of Irving Babbitt and the philosophical interests of George Santayana. Eliot was also influenced by the study of Renaissance literature and South Asian religions. He wrote his Harvard dissertation on an English idealist philosopher who emphasized on the nature of individual experience. He also studied Greek philosophy at Oxford, taught school in London, and had a position with Lloyd's Bank. In 1915, he married a woman that had poor emotional and physical health and it did not work out. This led to worry and distress and he went to recuperate in a Swiss Sanitorium. Later, Eliot left his wife and remarried to his secretary, Valerie Fletcher.

The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor, 2006.
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