ENGL2035:
Modernism

Handbook entry 

W. H. Auden

As an introduction, John Fuller's A Reader's Guide to W. H. Auden (PR6001.U4 Z7 1970A) is quite old now, but still very serviceable. His W. H. Auden: A Commentary (PR6001.U4 Z694 1998) is an updating. For reference, there's Martin E. Gingerich's W. H. Auden: A Reference Guide (Z8047.55.G55 1977). The W. H. Auden Society's website has links and information about publications.

Samuel Hynes's The Auden Generation: Literature and Politics in England in the 1930s (PR478.I5 H9 1976) is the classic study of that new generation of writers following those who have been our main focus, including Auden, Cecil Day-Lewis, Stephen Spender, Louis MacNiece, George Orwell and Christopher Isherwood. See also Michael O'Neill and Gareth Reeves's Auden, MacNiece, Spender: The Thirties Poetry (PR610 .O54 1992). There's an interesting chapter on the Auden generation in Jeremy Jennings and Anthony Kemp-Welch's Intellectuals in Politics: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Rushdie Affair (HM213 .I5474 1997).

Two recent biographies are Richard Davenport-Hines's Auden (PR6001.U4 Z639 1995) and Humphrey Carpenter's W. H. Auden: A Biography (PR6001.U4 Z63 1981A). Either of these can be augmented by Auden's own voice: Howard Griffin's Conversations with Auden (PR6001.U4 Z725 1981), or Alan Ansen's The Table Talk of W. H. Auden (PR6001.U4 Z536 1990).

If you've enjoyed Auden, you'll want to read his Collected Poems (PR6001.U4 A17 1976). You can got a good idea of his critical writing from The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (PR6001.U4 D9 1962), or the collected Forewords and Afterwords, edited by Edward Mendelson (PN511.A78 1973). On his criticism and aesthetics, see Lucy McDiarmid's Auden's Apologies for Poetry (PR6001.U4 Z757 1990).

To the left is Brueghel's The Fall of Icarus, the painting from the poem "Musée des Beaux Arts". And to the right and below is Picasso's Guernica, from 1937--the most famous image of the Spanish Civil War.  Click on the images for larger versions.

Frederick Buell's W. H. Auden as a Social Poet (PR6001.U4 Z628 1973) and Lucy McDiarmid's Saving Civilization: Yeats, Eliot and Auden Between the Wars (PR605.S6 M38 1984) focus on Auden's politics. Stan Smith's brief W. H. Auden (PR6001.U4Z826 1985) reads his later poetry as continuing rather than reversing his earlier political beliefs.

If you want to hear Auden's voice, The Academy of American Poets has a page on Auden, which has, among other things, an audio file of him reading "On the circuit". The BBC Audio Archives also have audios of Auden talking about "the influence of Marx and Freud on his poetry, the didactic nature of his work, the aim of the arts, the importance of fun," "recognising great art," "the musical treatment of poets' work", and reading the poem "After a Child's Guide to Modern Physics." And Salon.com has audios of Auden reading "Under which Lyre" and "Law like Love."

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