W. H. Auden

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Standard Name: Auden, W. H.
Used Form: Wystan Hugh Auden
WHA has been called the outstanding poet of his generation. His prolific output of poetry is endlessly versatile, often deeply personal but usually also carrying political freight, often experimental, combining the classical and the colloquial, the lyric and the deliberately prosaic. He wrote a great deal in collaboration, often for stage or even operatic performance. He was a riveting lecturer and an unsystematic but always stimulating literary critic.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Storm Jameson
Her central theme here is the responsibility of the writer for the survival of the values of liberal humanism.
British Book News. British Council.
(1950): 838
Her title essay paints a sombre political picture of Britain. SJ discusses the...
Textual Production Jane Gardam
The book is dedicated to Stone. Its epigraph quotes W. H. Auden : We are not free to choose by what we / shall be enchanted. The poet advises, in the case of a...
Textual Production Naomi Mitchison
NM 's well-known contributors included Dick Mitchison , John Pilley , Margaret Cole , and W. H. Auden . The project was born during the run-up to the 1931 election.
Benton, Jill. Naomi Mitchison: A Biography. Pandora, 1992.
82
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz, 1979.
169-70
Textual Production Hannah Arendt
Authors or politicians whom HA wrote about in articles, reviews, or editions (excluding those essays reprinted in Men in Dark Times) include Konrad Adenauer , W. H. Auden , Wilhelm Dilthey , Waldemar Gurian
Textual Production Diana Athill
Field kept what he calls Athill's long, marvellous letters,
The phrase is from W. H. Auden , from a poem about literary biography in which the poet imagines these letters thrown away.
and in...
Textual Production Amabel Williams-Ellis
Contributors included Nancy Cunard , Winifred Holtby , Storm Jameson , Pamela Hansford Johnson , Naomi Mitchison , Sylvia Townsend Warner , W. H. Auden , John Lehmann , and John Strachey .
Textual Production Anne Stevenson
As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan , her models included the suave, disciplined, informal, very accessible
Stevenson, Anne. Between the Iceberg and the Ship. University of Michigan Press, 1998.
122
early poems of her near-contemporary Adrienne Rich . She wrote two stage works that were performed...
Textual Production Jan Morris
Morris wrote on a wide range of topics for the Times, contributing The Comic Strip in American Life and The Plays of Eugene O'Neill to a collection of articles jointly titled The American Press...
Textual Production Christine Brooke-Rose
Here she examines Stephen Crane , Nathaniel Hawthorne , Ezra Pound , and W. H. Auden , as examples of the role and operation of poets or fiction writers who also produce criticism.
Textual Production Laura Riding
Though LR had recently been publishing prose works in the USA as well as at London, she had issued no book of poems there since The Close Chaplet twelve years before.
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books, 2005.
320
This volume...
Textual Production Nancy Cunard
The poems included Auden 's Spain.
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Textual Production Maureen Duffy
MD 's website features a series of poems indignantly addressed to William Langland , author of Piers Plowman, of behalf of the new, unacknowledged poor. The New Vision of Piers Plowless sets the scene:...
Textual Production Kathleen Raine
Early in her career KR was known as a commentator on contemporary or near-contemporary, modernist poetry: a volume of her reviews written between January 1941 and March 1951 was published in 2002 as Defining the...
Textual Production Candia McWilliam
CMW published her second novel, A Little Stranger, dedicated to Clara Henderson , with stanzas from Auden 's poem Trinculo's Song as an epigraph.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
McWilliam, Candia. A Little Stranger. Bloomsbury, 1989.
prelims
Textual Production Helen Dunmore
HD 's next novel, With Your Crooked Heart, the last in her triplet of thrillers, is titled from a poem by Auden .
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

Timeline

By October 1928: Stephen Spender, as an Oxford undergraduate,...

Writing climate item

By October 1928

Stephen Spender , as an Oxford undergraduate, self-published a booklet of poems entitled Nine Experiments.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

January 1933: The first number appeared of the periodical...

Writing climate item

January 1933

The first number appeared of the periodical New Verse, edited by Geoffrey Grigson ; it ran until May 1939.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

February 1936: The awesome trio of political theorist Harold...

Writing climate item

February 1936

The awesome trio
Laity, Paul. “The left’s ace of clubs”. Guardian Unlimited, 7 July 2001.
of political theorist Harold Laski , publisher Victor Gollancz , and writer and Labour MP John Strachey established the Left Book Club (LBC) .
Laity, Paul. “The left’s ace of clubs”. Guardian Unlimited, 7 July 2001.

18 July 1936: The Spanish Civil War began between the Republicans...

National or international item

18 July 1936

The Spanish Civil War began between the Republicans (including Communists) and the Fascists led by Francisco Franco .
Bruno, Leonard. On the Move: A Chronology of Advances in Transportation. Gale Research, 1993.
228

Later 1936: The General Post Office Film Unit under John...

Building item

Later 1936

The General Post Office Film Unit under John Grierson created a documentary entitled Night Mail, directed by Basil Wright , which featured music by Benjamin Britten and a film poem by W. H. Auden

15 August 1947: British rule on the Indian subcontinent ended...

National or international item

15 August 1947

British rule on the Indian subcontinent ended in independence for India and Pakistan (which became Dominions within the Commonwealth), but also in Partition, which divided the new countries along religious lines.
Forbes, Peter, editor. Scanning the Century. Viking, 1999.
143-4
Auden, W. H. Collected Poems. Editor Mendelson, Edward, Faber and Faber, 1976.
604
“The Legacy Events Index: India - Pakistan Partition”. The Legacy Project.

September 1949: PEN International held a conference in Venice....

Writing climate item

September 1949

PEN International held a conference in Venice. Delegates included W. H. Auden , C. P. Snow , Pamela Hansford Johnson , and Cecily Mackworth .
Mackworth, Cecily. Ends of the World. Carcanet, 1987.
124-6

By July 1964: Canadian writer Jane Rule issued in Canada...

Writing climate item

By July 1964

Canadian writer Jane Rule issued in Canada and England her best-known novel, Desert of the Heart, whose title alludes to W. H. Auden 's poem on the death of Yeats .
Healy, Eloise Klein. “Jane Rule: Inventing and Reinventing Community”. Women’s Review of Books, Vol.
25
, No. 1, Jan.–Feb. 2008, pp. 10-11.
10-11
Canadian Periodical Index. Canadian Library Association, 1928–2025.
17 (1964): 80

1979: Anna Adams published her verse letter A Reply...

Women writers item

1979

Anna Adams published her verse letter A Reply to Intercepted Mail (A Verse-Letter to W. H. Auden ) in the Peterloo Poets series.
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

Texts

Rich, Adrienne, and W. H. Auden. A Change of World. Yale University Press, 1951.
Auden, W. H. About the House. Random House, 1965.
Auden, W. H. Another Time. Faber and Faber, 1940.
Auden, W. H. Collected Longer Poems. Random House, 1965.
Auden, W. H. Collected Poems. Editor Mendelson, Edward, Faber and Faber, 1976.
Auden, W. H. Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957. Faber and Faber, 1969.
Auden, W. H. For the Time Being. Random House.
Auden, W. H., and Christopher Isherwood. Journey to a War. Faber and Faber, 1939.
Auden, W. H., and Louis MacNeice. Letters from Iceland. Faber and Faber, 1937.
Auden, W. H. Look, Stranger!. Faber and Faber, 1936.
Britten, Benjamin, and W. H. Auden. Paul Bunyan. Faber Music.
Auden, W. H. Poems. Faber and Faber, 1930.
Auden, W. H. Secondary Worlds. Faber and Faber, 1968.
Auden, W. H. “September 1, 1939”. Poets.org: from the Academy of American Poets: Auden.
Auden, W. H. Thank You, Fog. Faber and Faber, 1974.
Auden, W. H. The Age of Anxiety. Random House, 1947.
Auden, W. H. The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays. Random House, 1962.
Auden, W. H. The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays. Faber and Faber, 1975.
Auden, W. H. The Enchafèd Flood; or, the Romantic Iconography of the Sea. Faber and Faber, 1950.
Stravinsky, Igor Fedorovich et al. The Rake’s Progress. Sorteni.
Auden, W. H. The Shield of Achilles. Faber and Faber, 1955.