Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot, English author and educator (d. 1947)
Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot (28 May 1888 – 22 January 1947) was the first wife of American-English poet T. S. Eliot, whom she married in 1915, while he was studying at Oxford.
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 to an asylum and eventually died there, apparently from a heart attack, but possibly an overdose.
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. Their tortured marriage is often cited as the inspiration for The Waste Land, which remains his most noted work. Research into their relationship has been hampered by lack of access to her diaries, whose copyright was granted to Eliot’s widow Valerie.