T.S. Eliot is one of the most influential poets and literary critics of 20th century. He is regarded as one of the key figures of Modernism. His critical writings played a significant role in shaping modern theory of poetry. “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919) is an essay which was first published in The Egoist and later in Eliot’s first book of criticism, The Sacred Wood (1920). In this essay he describes about the theory of impersonality. Eliot rejects the romantic conception of poetry as the direct expression of the poet’s personal emotion. The poet must surrender the personal self and allow the poetic mind to act as a medium through which diverse experiences are synthesized into a new artistic whole. Eliot’s famous analogy of the poet’s mind as a catalyst explains this process. This theory is closely associated with objective correlative. This paper examines the aspects of Eliot’s theory and evaluates its significance in modern literary criticism.