Valerie Eliot Valerie Eliot Esmé Valerie Eliot (née Fletcher; 17 August 19269 November 2012) was the second wife and later widow of the Nobel prize-winning poet, T. S. Eliot. She was a major stockholder in the publishing firm of Faber and Faber Limited and the editor and annotator of a number of books dealing with her late husband's writings. The daughter of an insurance manager in Leeds, she was educated at Queen Anne's School, Caversham, where she was reputed to have told her headteacher that she knew precisely what she wanted to become: secretary to TS Eliot. Valerie married Eliot, almost 40
Howard Baker (poet) Howard Baker (poet) Howard Baker (born Howard Wilson Baker, Jr.) (April 5, 1905 – July 1990) was an American poet, dramatist, and literary critic. Baker was born in Philadelphia. He did graduate work in English at Stanford University, where he befriended Yvor Winters and was co-editor of the literary magazine "Gyroscope". After getting his master's degree, he moved to Paris to pursue his studies at the Sorbonne. There he married the novelist Dorothy Baker and met and was influenced by Ernest Hemingway and Ford Madox Ford, who helped him to publish his first work, the autobiographical novel "Orange Valley" (1931).