Portrait of T.S. Eliot

From early in his career, T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) was renowned in literary circles, but he was also a cultural celebrity. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry” in 1948, Vogue magazine ran a short profile of the poet featuring another portrait from this sitting with George Platt Lynes. The profile notes that “to many, The Waste Land … was a major power in the search for psychological realism.” Eliot liked the photographs, which he said made him “look like a moderately good film actor in a variety of parts.”