Four Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published over a six-year period. The first poem, Burnt Norton, was published with a collection of his early works. After a few years, Eliot composed the other three poems, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding, which were written during World War II and the air-raids on Great Britain. They were first published as a series by Faber and Faber in Great Britain between 1940 and 1942 towards the end of Eliot's poetic career. The poems were not collected until Eliot's New York publisher printed them together in 1943.

The Dry Salvages is the third poem of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, marking the beginning of the point when the series was consciously being shaped as a set of four poems. It was written and published in 1941 during the air-raids on Great Britain, an event that threatened him while giving lectures in the area. The title comes from the name of a marine rock formation off the coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts, where he spent time at as a child.