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W.H. Auden

Author profile

born

February 21, 1907 in York, England, The United Kingdom

died

September 29, 1973

gender

male

genre

Poetry

influences

Icelandic Sagas

About this author

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Wystan Hugh Auden who signed his works W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet, born in England, later an American citizen, regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of tone, form and content. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature.

Auden published about four hundred poems, including seven long poems (two of them book-length). His poetry was encyclopedic in scope and method, ranging in style from obscure twentieth-century modernism to the lucid t...more Wystan Hugh Auden who signed his works W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet, born in England, later an American citizen, regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of tone, form and content. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature.

Auden published about four hundred poems, including seven long poems (two of them book-length). His poetry was encyclopedic in scope and method, ranging in style from obscure twentieth-century modernism to the lucid traditional forms such as ballads and limericks, from doggerel through haiku and villanelles to a "Christmas Oratorio" and a baroque eclogue in Anglo-Saxon meters.

The tone and content of his poems ranged from pop-song clichés to complex philosophical meditations, from the corns on his toes to atoms and stars, from contemporary crises to the evolution of society.

He also wrote more than four hundred essays and reviews about literature, history, politics, music, religion, and many other subjects. He collaborated on plays with Christopher Isherwood and on opera libretti with Chester Kallman, worked with a group of artists and filmmakers on documentary films in the 1930s and with the New York Pro Musica early music group in the 1950s and 1960s. About collaboration he wrote in 1964: "collaboration has brought me greater erotic joy . . . than any sexual relations I have had."

Auden controversially rewrote or discarded some of his most famous poems when he prepared his later collected editions. He wrote that he rejected poems that he found "boring" or "dishonest" in the sense that they expressed views that he had never held but had used only because he felt they would be rhetorically effective. His rejected poems include "Spain" and "September 1, 1939." His literary executor, Edward Mendelson, argues in his introduction to Auden's Selected Poems that Auden's practice reflected his sense of the persuasive power of poetry and his reluctance to misuse it. (Selected Poems includes some poems that Auden rejected and early texts of poems that he revised.)

Source: Wikipedia(less)

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Books by W.H. Auden

Average rating: 4.13 · 6,396 ratings · 379 reviews · 142 distinct works

	Selected Poems by W.H. Auden, Edward Mendelson (Editor) 4.16 avg rating — 2,139 ratings — published 1959 — 25 editions	My rating:
	Collected Poems by W.H. Auden, Edward Mendelson (Editor) 4.25 avg rating — 1,263 ratings — 10 editions	My rating:
	The Dyer's Hand 4.32 avg rating — 117 ratings — published 1962 — 3 editions	My rating:
	As I Walked Out One Evening: Songs, Ballads, Lullabies, Limericks, and Other Light Verse 4.29 avg rating — 127 ratings — 3 editions	My rating:
	Tell Me the Truth About Love 4.11 avg rating — 159 ratings — published 1994 — 7 editions	My rating:
	Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957 4.15 avg rating — 72 ratings — published 1966 — 6 editions	My rating:
	The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare's the Tempest by W.H. Auden, Arthur C. Kirsch (Editor) 4.09 avg rating — 54 ratings — published 2003 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Lectures on Shakespeare by W.H. Auden, Arthur Kirsch 4.22 avg rating — 46 ratings — published 2004 — 3 editions	My rating:
	The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard (New York Review Books Classics) by W.H. Auden, Søren Kierkegaard 4.00 avg rating — 42 ratings — published 1999	My rating:
	The Portable Greek Reader by W.H. Auden (Editor), Melissa Jacoby (Designed by) 3.82 avg rating — 28 ratings — published 1955 — 2 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by W.H. Auden

“Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.”
― W.H. Auden, New Year Letter

tags: poetry

948 people liked it

“The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”
― W.H. Auden, Selected Poems

tags: poetry

276 people liked it

“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can; all of them make me laugh.”
― W.H. Auden

tags: laughter

268 people liked it

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W.H. Auden

Author profile

combine editionsBooks by W.H. Auden

Quotes by W.H. Auden

Topics Mentioning This Author

combine editions
Books by W.H. Auden