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
Family and Intimate relationships Hannah Arendt
After less than a month as a widow, HA received a proposal of marriage from W. H. Auden , who was a friend but not a particularly close one. He suggested that they were both...
Literary responses Hannah Arendt
When she sent a copy of this book to Martin Heidegger , he reacted with pique and anger at being forced to recognise the scope of her intellectual abilities and achievement, which she had always...
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...
Friends, Associates Sybille Bedford
Introduced to Aldous Huxley and his wife Maria by the South African poet Roy Campbell while at Sanary, the young SB became their intimate friend.
Bedford, Sybille. Quicksands. Counterpoint.
249-50
She was later embarrassed by her earlier admiration for...
politics Sybille Bedford
At this time, with a German passport near its expiry date and an application for French citizenship which had so far gone nowhere, she attracted the attention of the Nazi authorities not only by expressing...
Literary responses Stella Benson
Naomi Mitichison assured SB that the young Auden was fearfully interested in her poems (which Mitchison had been quoting).
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz.
136
Education Elizabeth Bishop
EB loved the village school in Great Village, Nova Scotia, where she learned to read and write. She later, supported by a Bishop family trust, attended first a summer camp, then a private school...
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.
Literary responses Wendy Cope
Reviewer Andrew O'Hagan , however, applies a withering pen to WC in a tirade about a general style of anthology which is, he says, frivolous or aimed at the lifestyle or selfhelp markets. His complaint...
Textual Production Nancy Cunard
The poems included Auden 's Spain.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Textual Features Carol Ann Duffy
Critic Deryn Rees-Jones discerns widely varied influences on CAD 's work: mainstream English poets like Wordsworth , Robert Browning , T. S. Eliot , Auden , Dylan Thomas , Larkin , and Ted Hughes ...
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:...
Intertextuality and Influence Carol Ann Duffy
Duffy answers back not just to male historical figures but (as a reviewer pointed out) to the male poets who have re-imagined such figures, like Auden in The Fall of Icarus. Elsewhere she remarks...
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. 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.

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

Writing climate item

January 1933

The first number appeared of the periodicalNew Verse, edited by Geoffrey Grigson ; it ran until May 1939.

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.
of political theorist Harold Laski , publisher Victor Gollancz , and writer and Labour MP John Strachey established the Left Book Club (LBC) .

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 .

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.

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 .

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 .

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

Women writers item

1979

Anna Adams published her verseletterA Reply to Intercepted Mail (A Verse-Letter to W. H. Auden ) in the Peterloo Poets series.

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.