Original autograph manuscripts of two later Auden poems. "Prologue At Sixty" written in blue ink over 4 sheets, 110 lines, and signed by Auden. "In Due Season" written in blue ink on a single sheet, 24 lines, also signed by Auden.With:An autograph letter from Auden to Jon Wynne-Tyson, dated August 20th 1968, sent to accompany the poems' submission to the publisher. With the original envelope addressed in Auden's hand.A second autograph letter from Auden to Wynne-Tyson, dated August 28th 1968, explaining that In Due Season is unpublished. With the original envelope addressed in Auden's hand.And an earlier typed letter from Auden addressed to Wynne-Tyson's Centaur Press, dated November 9th 1962, requesting their new edition of The Poems of William Barnes. All sheets of manuscript and correspondence remain in fine condition, showing only light evidence of being folded into envelopes.

An exceptional pair of manuscript poems in Auden's hand, written for submission to a project co-ordinated by British publisher Jon Wynne-Tyson, founder of the Centaur Press.
At the time of these manuscripts' creation, Prologue At Sixty had been published the summer before in the New York Review Of Books, but had yet to be published in Britain, and In Due Season had not been published on either side of the Atlantic.
"Prologue" captures the retrospective mood so often associated with Auden's later work, and was the only birthday poem he wrote for himself. It is, according to Mendelson, "triumphant and hopeful, while also looking back gratefully on an eclectically international list of eighteen sacred places from his past". This is encapsulated in one of the poem's closing thoughts, that is it "human to listen, Beyond hope, for an Eighth Day".
"In Due Season" would eventually appear in Auden's 1969 collection City Without Walls, its title also taken from the Book of Proverbs. It too takes up the retrospective mood of the period, echoing Homer's generations of the leaves where he notes that "younger leaves to the old give the releasing draught".
It is apparent from the correspondence sent by Auden with these manuscripts that Jon Wynne-Tyson had asked Auden to submit some poems for an upcoming publishing project of his. In the second letter Auden brushes off any need of renumeration for the poems, asking instead for Wynne-Tyson to send him a copy of William Morris's Icelandic Journals, recently re-published by the Centaur Press.
Where Auden manuscripts appear on the market, they tend to be fair copies produced for presentation, often years or decades after their initial publication. Those written with direct literary intent are uncommon, as are those of such considerable length.

PROVENANCE: From the collection of British publisher and author Jon Wynne-Tyson (1924-2020).

Stock ID: 40363