W. H. Auden

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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.

Milestones

21 February 1907

Wystan Hugh Auden , British (later American) poet, was born in York, England, the youngest of three brothers.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Spears, Monroe K. The Poetry of W.H. Auden. The Disenchanted Island. Oxford University Press.
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March 1922

As he later related in Letters from Iceland, the schoolboy WHA , asked by a friend in the course of an argument whether he wrote poetry, decided at once that he would do so.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Spears, Monroe K. The Poetry of W.H. Auden. The Disenchanted Island. Oxford University Press.
3

7 February 1940

WHA published Another Time, a volume which contained many of his best-known poems, including On the Death of W. B. Yeats, Musée des Beaux Arts, and Lullaby.
Bloomfield, Barry Cambray, and Edward Mendelson. W. H. Auden: A Bibliography 1924-1969. University Press of Virginia.
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“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.

During the night of 28-9 September 1973

WHA , British-American poet, died at the Altenburgerhof Hotel in Vienna, Austria; his heart failed.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1974

WHA 's Thank You, Fog: Last Poems was posthumously published with the dedication he had already given it to Michael and Marny Yates .
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.

Biography

Birth and Family

21 February 1907

Wystan Hugh Auden , British (later American) poet, was born in York, England, the youngest of three brothers.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Spears, Monroe K. The Poetry of W.H. Auden. The Disenchanted Island. Oxford University Press.
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