This collection of Auden s work includes essays, reviews and other writings that Auden published or prepared for delivery from the time he arrived in America in January 1939 until the end of 1948 In the following year he wrote his first book of criticism, The Enchafed Flood, and adopted a new set of themes in his essays and reviews.

Wystan Hugh Auden was an Anglo American poet, best known for love poems such as
Funeral Blues, poems on political and social themes such as
September 1, 1939 and
The Shield of Achilles, poems on cultural and psychological themes such as
The Age of Anxiety, and poems on religious themes such as
For the Time Being and
Horae Canonicae He was born in York, grew up in and near Birmingham in a professi Wystan Hugh Auden was an Anglo American poet, best known for love poems such as
Funeral Blues, poems on political and social themes such as
September 1, 1939 and
The Shield of Achilles, poems on cultural and psychological themes such as
The Age of Anxiety, and poems on religious themes such as
For the Time Being and
Horae Canonicae He was born in York, grew up in and near Birmingham in a professional middle class family He attended English independent or public schools and studied English at Christ Church, Oxford After a few months in Berlin in 1928 29 he spent five years 1930 35 teaching in English public schools, then travelled to Iceland and China in order to write books about his journeys In 1939 he moved to the United States and became an American citizen in 1946 He taught from 1941 through 1945 in American universities, followed by occasional visiting professorships in the 1950s From 1947 through 1957 he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia from 1958 until the end of his life he wintered in New York in Oxford in 1972 73 and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.Auden s poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form and content He came to wide public attention at the age of twenty three, in 1930, with his first book,
Poems, followed in 1932 by
The Orators Three plays written in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in 1935 38 built his reputation as a left wing political writer Auden moved to the United States partly to escape this reputation, and his work in the 1940s, including the long poems
For the Time Being and The Sea and the Mirror, focused on religious themes He won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his 1947 long poem
The Age of Anxiety, the title of which became a popular phrase describing the modern era In 1956 61 he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford his lectures were popular with students and faculty and served as the basis of his 1962 prose collection The Dyer s Hand.From around 1927 to 1939 Auden and Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship while both had briefer but intense relations with other men In 1939 Auden fell in love with Chester Kallman and regarded their relation as a marriage this ended in 1941 when Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded, but the two maintained their friendship, and from 1947 until Auden s death they lived in the same house or apartment in a non sexual relation, often collaborating on opera libretti such as
The Rake s Progress, for music by Igor Stravinsky.Auden was a prolific writer of prose essays and reviews on literary, political, psychological and religious subjects, and he worked at various times on documentary films, poetic plays, and other forms of performance Throughout his career he was both controversial and influential, and critical views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive, treating him as a lesser follower of W.B Yeats and T.S Eliot, to strongly affirmative, as in Joseph Brodsky s claim that he had the greatest mind of the twentieth century After his death, some of his poems, notably
Funeral Blues, Mus e des Beaux Arts, Refugee Blues, The Unknown Citizen, and September 1, 1939, became known to a much wider public than during his lifetime through films, broadcasts, and popular media.
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