W.H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907–1973) was born on 21 February 1907 in York, England. He studied at Christ Church, Oxford, where he became the central figure of a group of writers — Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice, Cecil Day-Lewis — who defined English poetry in the 1930s. He emigrated to the United States in January 1939, a move that caused controversy in England; he became an American citizen in 1946.

Life and Career

Auden’s early poetry — collected in Poems (1930, published by T.S. Eliot at Faber), The Orators (1932), and Look, Stranger! (1936) — was political, technically dazzling, and tonally distinctive: a mixture of private symbolism, public rhetoric, and clinical observation. The early poems — “Consider this and in our time,” “September 1, 1939,” “Musée des Beaux Arts,” “In Memory of W.B. Yeats” — are among the most anthologised in the English language.

His emigration to America, and his return to Christianity, produced a fundamental shift. The American poems — collected in Another Time (1940), The Age of Anxiety (1947, Pulitzer Prize), and Nones (1951) — are more personal, more discursive, more concerned with theology and domesticity. The Shield of Achilles (1955) contains some of his finest late poems.

Auden was also a prolific essayist, librettist (he collaborated with Chester Kallman on libretti for Stravinsky and Henze), and anthologist. His criticism — collected in The Dyer’s Hand (1962) and Forewords and Afterwords (1973) — is among the most intelligent literary criticism of the century.

His relationship with Chester Kallman — whom he met in 1939 and considered his lifelong companion — was central to his personal life. He spent his later years dividing his time between New York, Austria, and Oxford.

Major Works and Themes

Auden’s range is extraordinary: political poetry, love poetry, religious poetry, light verse, opera libretti, essays, travel writing. He could write in virtually any form — sonnet, villanelle, haiku, ballad, sestina — with equal facility. His technical command of meter and rhyme is rivalled in the twentieth century only by Frost.

His great themes include the relationship between private and public life, the nature of love, the claims of Christian faith in a secular world, and the relationship between art and morality. His famous revision and suppression of some early poems — including his attempt to disown “September 1, 1939” — reflects his belief that poetry should tell the truth and that a dishonest poem, however effective, should be discarded.

Critical Reception and Legacy

Auden is recognised as one of the three or four most important English-language poets of the twentieth century. His influence on subsequent poetry — particularly on the “Movement” poets in England and the New York school in America — is immense.

Key Works

• Poems (1930)
• “In Memory of W.B. Yeats” (1939)
• “Musée des Beaux Arts” (1938)
• Another Time (1940)
• The Age of Anxiety (1947) — Pulitzer Prize
• The Shield of Achilles (1955)
• The Dyer’s Hand (1962)

Collecting Auden

Poems (1930, Faber and Faber, London, published by T.S. Eliot) — the debut — is very scarce: $1,000–$5,000+. The earlier privately printed Poems (1928, Stephen Spender’s hand press, about 45 copies) is extremely rare and museum-quality: $20,000+.

The Orators (1932, Faber) brings $200–$800. Look, Stranger! (1936, Faber) brings $200–$600.

Another Time (1940, Random House, New York) brings $100–$400.

Faber and Faber first editions are the standard collected form for the early and middle-period work. Random House published the American editions. Auden signed at readings and events; signed copies exist but are increasingly valuable since his death in 1973.