Takes to Journalism: Rise of the Poet
In 1917, Eliot gave up teaching, and entered the foreign department of Lloyds Bank, where he worked till 1925, dealing with “documentary bills, acceptances, and foreign exchange”. During all the time he was also writing vigorously, and several times became ill with over-work. In 1918, he registered for the U.S. Navy, but was not taken into service owing to his poor health. He worked as the assistant editor of The Egoist from 1917-1919, contributed frequently to the Athenaeum, and in 1923, became the editor of The Criterion which he continued to edit till the out-break of the Second World War. In1925, he joined the new publishing firm, Faber and Faber, of which he soon became the director, and worked in that capacity till the end of his days. During this time he had also been writing poetry, and his reputation as a poet was constantly growing. The publication of The Waste Land (1922) attracted wide interest; its technique was widely imitated, and it influenced even those who were not conscious imitators.
Joins Anglo-Catholic Church: The Christian Note
Eliot became a British citizen in 1927, and also joined the British Church that very year. The event marks an epoch in his poetic career. The poems written after that as The Journey of the Magi, Ash Wednesday are more religious in tone: they reflect the stage of Eliot’s thinking and feeling about the religion he has adopted and are a stage in his intention to communicate his feelings. His reputation continued to grow and he paid a short visit to Harvard, in 1933, to lecture there as a visiting professor. At this time, Eliot was also developing a practical interest in drama, with a view to reaching wider audiences. The results were the great masterpieces of poetic drama- The Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, The Confidential Clerk, The Cocktail Party, etc. His poetry, after 1935, continued to be religious, but not so obviously Christian as that of earlier period. His last major poetic work if The Four Quartets.
Fame and Prosperity

Eliot’s success both as a poet and in a worldly sense was remarkable. He visited the U.S.A. Several times as a visiting professor, and continued to publish articles and essays upto the very end of his days. World recognition of his genius came with the award of the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. On the death, in 1947, of hid first wife who had been ailing since 1930, he married his private secretary, Miss Valerie Fletcher, in 1957. This lady was the companion of his last days and nursed him tenderly when he fell ill in 1964. He died on 4th January, 1965, in London, leaving a void in the literary world which may never be filled. He was cremated and his ashes were buried in the little village of East Coker in Somerset from where his ancestor, Andrew Eliot, had migrated to America in the seventeenth century.