1888: September 26: Thomas Stearns Eliot born in St. Louis, Missouri to Henry Ware and Charlotte Stearns Eliot.

1898: A student at Smith Academy in St. Louis

1905: To Milton Academy in Massachusetts

1906-10: Undergraduate years at Harvard. Reads Symons’s The Symbolist Movement in Literature and the poetry of Laforgue. Studies with George Santayana and Irving Babbitt.

1910-11: Having finished BA and MA degrees at Harvard, spends a year at the Sorbonne in Paris. In the summer of 1911, finishes a version of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

1911-14: Returns to Harvard to study philosophy as a graduate student. Begins doctoral thesis on F.H. Bradley.

1914: To England on fellowship; meets Ezra Pound.

1915: Marries Vivien Haigh-Wood on June 26th; begins publishing poems that later appear in the Prufrock volume.

1916: Eliot working as teacher at Highgate Junior School and as University Extension Lecturer.

1917: Prufrock and Other Observation published. Eliot takes a position at Lloyds Bank in the Colonial and Foreign Department.

1919: Ara Vos Prec published, with "Gerontion" and the poems later published in Poems – 1920. "Tradition and the Individual Talent" appears in The Egoist.

1920 The Sacred Wood published.

1921 Ill and exhausted, Eliot takes leave from Lloyds Bank. Recuperating at Margate and Lausanne, finishes the drafts of The Waste Land, which he then shows to Pound.

1922: The Waste Land published. First issue of Criterion appears.

1925: Poems 1909-1925 published (with "The Hollow Men"). Eliot joins the publishing house of Faber & Gwyer, leaves Lloyds bank.

1927: Enters the Church of England and assumes British citizenship

1928: For Lancelot Andrewes published.

1930: Ash-Wednesday published.

1932: Selected Essays 1917-1932

1933: Eliot’s 1932-33 Norton lectures at Harvard published under the title The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933). At the University of Virginia, he delivers the lectures later published as After Strange Gods (1934). Obtains legal separation from Vivien.

1934: The Rock: A Pageant Play performed and published.

1935: Murder in the Cathedral performed.

1936: Collected Poems 1909-1935 (first appearance of "Burnt Norton").

1939: The Family Reunion performed. The Idea of a Christian Society published. Last issue of Criterion.

1940: East Coker published.

1941: The Dry Salvages published.

1942: Little Gidding published.

1947: Vivien Eliot dies.

1948: Wins Nobel Prize for Literature. Notes Towards the Definition of Culture published.

1949: The Cocktail Party performed.

1953: The Confidential Clerk performed.

1957: Married Valerie Fletcher on January 10. On Poetry and Poets published.

1958: The Elder Statesman performed.

1963: Collected Poems 1909-1962.

1965: Dies on January 4th; his ashes to East Coker.