Which 20th-century British poet wrote 'The Waste Land'?

The 20th-century British poet who wrote “The Waste Land” was T. S. Eliot. The poem was published in 1922 and became one of the defining works of literary modernism.

Eliot assembled the poem from shifting voices, quotations, myths, religious traditions, and literary allusions. Rather than telling one continuous story, it moves abruptly through different speakers, places, and historical moments, reflecting the fragmentation and cultural uncertainty associated with the period after the First World War.

Ezra Pound played an important editorial role, helping Eliot cut and reshape a much longer manuscript. Eliot dedicated the poem to Pound with the Italian phrase “il miglior fabbro,” meaning “the better craftsman.” The poem first appeared in Eliot’s magazine “The Criterion” in Britain and in “The Dial” in the United States. It is often confused with work by other major British poets, but Philip Larkin, Dylan Thomas, and W. H. Auden did not write it.