AUDEN, W.H.

“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language”

Wystan Hugh Auden, a Yorkshire born poet, noted for his technical virtuosity and an ability to write poems in nearly every imaginable verse form

He emerged on the English literary scene from the academes of Oxford, where, in 1928, he had his first work privately published by fellow undergraduate, Steven Spender. Simply titled Poems, this seminal work was printed in a vanishingly small number of around only 30 copies, its scarcity making it a “bibliophile’s prize”.   He was identified with the left-wing “Auden Group”, which included Spender and Christopher Isherwood, and during the economic and political tumult of the early thirties, his collection of verse (published by Faber in 1930) also entitled Poems, established Auden as the leading voice of a new generation,  where he tried to interpret the times, to diagnose the ills of society and deal with intellectual and moral problems of public concern

He travelled widely, visiting Germany, Iceland, and China, and served in the Spanish Civil war, all of which provided rich material for his poetry.  In 1939 he moved to the United States, where he met his lover, Chester Kallman, and became an American citizen. 

A prolific writer, Auden was also a noted playwright, librettist, editor, and essayist. Generally considered one of the great English poets of the twentieth century, and a natural successor to T.S. Eliot, his work has exerted a major influence on succeeding generations of poets on both sides of the Atlantic.

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