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
death W. B. Yeats
He was buried there two days later, having resisted the known wish of the Irish people that he should have a state funeral.
Tóibín, Colm. “A Djinn speaks”. London Review of Books, pp. 19-24.
24
Auden 's poem In Memory of W. B. Yeats, included...
politics Virginia Woolf
Through the 1930s, Woolf struggled to define herself and her work against the rise of Fascism in Europe, to chart the relationship between artistic and political tasks. She and her Bloomsbury friends began to be...
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.
122
early poems of her near-contemporary Adrienne Rich . She wrote two stage works that were performed...
Friends, Associates Edith Sitwell
During her first visit to the USA, ES met Charlie Chaplin , Greta Garbo , and Marianne Moore . A press party at the Gotham Book Mart in New York was attended by ES ...
Material Conditions of Writing E. J. Scovell
EJS began writing poetry in early childhood because of a love of meter and rhyme.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
As an undergraduate at Oxford she was placing her poetry in university journals. She was one of the few women...
Intertextuality and Influence Anne Ridler
AR wrote that the two great influences on her as a poet (because they helped her to find her own voice) were Sir Thomas Wyatt and W. H. Auden . Eliot , too, was inescapable...
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.
320
This volume...
Material Conditions of Writing Adrienne Rich
Her father had planned for her to be a poet; he encouraged her to write something every day and show it to him.
O’Mahoney, John. “Poet and Pioneer: Adrienne Rich”. The Guardian, pp. Review 20 - 3.
21
Though at some stages she hated this, she came to believe...
Literary responses Adrienne Rich
W. H. Auden , with genuine admiration but instinctive condescension, praised Rich's poems as neatly and modestly dressed. He found them like good girls who speak quietly but do not mumble, respect their elders but...
Textual Features Adrienne Rich
This volume's title and epigraph are taken from The Great Gatsby. Like AR 's other works, Dark Fields of the Republic reflects a diverse group of artistic and social influences, which include the Bible...
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 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...
Reception Marianne Moore
A late flowering of MM 's reputation began when she spoke at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in a double bill with W. H. Auden .
Williams, Mary-Kay. “What a Mother”. London Review of Books, Vol.
37
, No. 23, p. 19021.
21
Friends, Associates Marianne Moore
MM corresponded with T. S. Eliot from 1921 until the year before his death. She was a friend of H. D. and of Bryher , and her editors believe that every one of her five...

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.