Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot (28 May 1888 – 22 January 1947) was the first wife of American poet T. S. Eliot, whom she wed in 1915, while he was studying at Oxford. They were never compatible; he seems to have been seeking a pretext to stay in England, in defiance of his family, by marrying an English bride. Haigh-Wood had always suffered from serious health problems, compounded by insecurity about her social class. It is clear that her disastrous marriage worsened her condition. Eliot would not consider divorce, but formally separated from her in 1933. She was committed
T. S. Eliot difficulties; it reveals the hidden form of the work, [and] indicates how each thing falls into place." Eliot's reputation as a poet, as well as his influence in the academy, peaked following the publication of "The Four Quartets". In an essay on Eliot published in 1989, the writer Cynthia Ozick refers to this peak of influence (from the 1940s through the early 1960s) as "the Age of Eliot" when Eliot "seemed pure zenith, a colossus, nothing less than a permanent luminary, fixed in the firmament like the sun and the moon". But during this post-war period, others, like Ronald Bush,