Portrait of a Lady is a poem by T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

, first published in September 1915 in Others: A Magazine of the New Verse

Others: A Magazine of the New Verse

Others: A Magazine of the New Verse was founded by Alfred Kreymborg in July, 1915 with financing from Walter Conrad Arensberg. The magazine ran until July, 1919. It published poetry and other writing, as well as visual art. While the magazine never had more than 300 subscribers, it helped launch...

, March 1916 in Others: An Anthology of the New Verse, in February 1917 (without the epigraph) in The New Poetry: An Anthology, and finally in his 1917 collection of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations.

The poem's title is widely seen to be derived from the novel by Henry James

Henry James

Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

 with the same title. The poem employs as an epigraph the famous quotation from the play by Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...

, The Jew of Malta

The Jew of Malta

The Jew of Malta is a play by Christopher Marlowe, probably written in 1589 or 1590. Its plot is an original story of religious conflict, intrigue, and revenge, set against a backdrop of the struggle for supremacy between Spain and the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean that takes place on the...

, "Thou hast committed - / Fornication: but that was in another country, / And besides, the wench is dead."

The poem is one of the two Boston poems written by Eliot, the other being The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, commonly known as Prufrock, is a poem by T. S. Eliot, begun in February 1910 and published in Chicago in June 1915. Described as a "drama of literary anguish," it presents a stream of consciousness in the form of a dramatic monologue, and marked the beginning of...

. It gives us an insight into upper class society of the time as something rather empty and forlorn. The main focus of the poem, however, is the speaker, who in his own depiction of this Lady who belongs to this upper class society as soulless and empty, reveals himself as the one who is truly callous and unfeeling.

Like many of Eliot's early poems, Portrait of a Lady shows heavy influence from Jules Laforgue

Jules Laforgue

Jules Laforgue was an innovative Franco-Uruguayan poet, often referred to as a Symbolist poet. Critics and commentators have also pointed to Impressionism as a direct influence and his poetry has been called "part-symbolist, part-impressionist".-Life:...

 . For example in 'Another Complaint of my Lord Pierrot', Laforgue has the lines:

Finally, if one evening she dies amid my books,

Quiet; feigning not yet to trust my sight

I'd try an 'Oh, that; we'd what it takes, it looks.

Then it was serious, all right?'

While Eliot has the lines:

Well! and what if she should die some afternoon,

Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose;

Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand

With the smoke coming down above the housetops;

Doubtful, for a while

Not knowing what to feel or if I understand

Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon...

And Of course, to be so late, would ruin

me, though save me from fate.

Portrait of a Lady is also the name of a poem by William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...

.