T. S. Eliot Possum's Book of Practical Cats" (1939), a collection of light verse; "Poems Written in Early Youth", posthumously published in 1967 and consisting mainly of poems published between 1907 and 1910 in "The Harvard Advocate", and "Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917", material Eliot never intended to have published, which appeared posthumously in 1997. During an interview in 1959, Eliot said of his nationality and its role in his work: "I'd say that my poetry has obviously more in common with my distinguished contemporaries in America than with anything written in my generation in England. That I'm sure of. ...
T. S. Eliot Eliot, his friend Robert Sencourt comments that the young Eliot "would often curl up in the window-seat behind an enormous book, setting the drug of dreams against the pain of living." Secondly, Eliot credited his hometown with fuelling his literary vision: "It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London."