“O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.”

American-born poet, essayist and playwright

T. S. Eliot was an American-born poet, essayist and playwright. He became a leading figure in modernist poetry in English, and his work helped change the form through its style, structure and somber tone. He was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in Literature. Eliot is also known for his critical essays, which often questioned established cultural assumptions and looked again at accepted ideas. Alongside his poetry and drama, that criticism helped make him one of the defining literary voices of the twentieth century.