ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the T S Eliot's background as student and teacher. Eliot came from a New England family, of English origin, which had settled in St Louis, Missouri, in the Midwest, and which was strongly involved in education and the Unitarian Church. The summer of 1914 found Eliot attending a summer programme at Marburg in Germany, prematurely interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War, which compelled him to move quickly to England where he had been granted a scholarship to study at Merton College, Oxford. As well as taking weekly tutorial groups as an Assistant in Philosophy at Harvard, Eliot had other direct experience of teaching. After leaving Oxford he taught French and Latin for a year at Highgate School, a North London prep school, where his pupils included the young John Betjeman, the future Poet Laureate. Eliot's spell at Highgate was followed by a term at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe.
