In the previous chapter my discussion has seemed to assume that Eliot was primarily a writer with a British audience and British affiliations. Of course, this is not the whole story and especially not so as his fame grew from the mid-1930s on. He was an American who established himself in England, and it is important to remember that during his later years, the years of fame, he was also a transatlantic personality. Eliot's career embodies the coherence of the Atlantic community in the 1940s and after. In recognizing Eliot's special position in this respect, the Ackroyd and Gordon biographies very rightly underscore Eliot's American origins. Moreover, the work of Eric Sigg, The American T. S. Eliot, proposes a reading of the early writings which emphasizes Eliot's indebtedness to American intellectual history, as one might expect, but also the enduring impact of Eliot's family relations on his creative evolution.

Eliot's Americanness is now a familiar critical given (and acknowledged by Eliot himself in many places but most significantly in ‘The Dry Salvages’ and his amusing mini-allegory of the migrating American robin in To Criticize the Critic 50). The question of whether his work is primarily American or English, or European, in influence and character is not the issue I want to raise. There is another reason for keeping Eliot's transatlantic connections before us. My argument about the later poetry and plays depends on recognizing the extent of Eliot's authority as a cultural figure in his later years and in bringing to light his ‘natural’ audience, the particular audience to which his work seems to be primarily addressed.