Wystan Hugh Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden was born on February 21, 1907, in provincial York, England. Over the next sixty-six years, he became one of the most prolific poets of the twentieth century. He was a versatile poet who felt that poetry was "a game of knowledge." He boarded at Gresham’s School in Norfolk and in 1925 went to Christ Church at Oxford. Although he initially studied biology, he quickly switched to English. From there he embarked on a literary career that covered almost fifty years. Auden’s influences were plentiful: T. S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Frost, and above all Thomas Hardy. Ironically, future generations of poets, including John Ashbery, W.S. Merwin, James Wright, and James Merrill, would look to Auden as a primary influence in their own poetry.

The first phase, or "chapter" as Auden would call it, of his literary life covered 1927 to 1932. During this time he emerged from the land of English Romanticism, the Lake District. A pamphlet entitled Poems was printed out in 1928 on a hand press with the help of poet and friend Stephen Spender. After spending a year and a half in Berlin, Germany, Auden returned to England to have his first book published. This book, again entitled Poems (1930), was published by Faber and Faber under the direction of T.S. Eliot.

As David Perkins explains in A Modern History of Poetry: Modernism and After, Auden "seemed in the 20’s to be the next step beyond Eliot. The general trend of his writing, regarded as a reaction against Eliot, seemed to be toward accessibility, a more conversational tone, and a freer use of discursive or generalizing language" (151). But the thirties led to a new "chapter" in Auden’s life.

By the 1930’s, Auden, alo...

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... the Pulitzer Prize. This was followed up with the esteemed Bollingen Prize (1954) and Feltrinelli Prize (1957). Auden continued to write with twenty-one more volumes to come. In 1946 Auden became an American citizen.

W. H. Auden deserves his ranking as not only one of the 20th-Century’s greatest poets, but also as one of its most prolific literary authors. Apart from his poetry, Auden wrote reviews, critical articles, and essays ranging from Greek literature and Icelandic sagas to modern poetry and fiction, folklore, children’s literature, psychology, religion, history, biography, light verse, and music. His influence can be compared only to the likes of Eliot, Yeats, and Pound.

WORKS CITED

Auden, W. H. Collected Poems. New York: Vintage International, 1991.

Perkins, David. A History of Modern Poetry: Modernism and After. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1987.