T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) was a poet, playwright, critic, publisher, and author of The Waste Land, arguably the most influential poetic work of the twentieth century. Born in St. Louis and educated at Harvard and the Sorbonne, in 1914 he immigrated to England, where Ezra Pound befriended and mentored him. The publication of Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), his first collection, established Eliot immediately. Other notable works include Ash-Wednesday; Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats; Four Quartets; and the play Murder in the Cathedral. Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.