The Guardian: The Island: WH Auden and the Last of Englishness review – a deep dive into the poet’s early years
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W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form, and content. Some of his best known poems are about love, such as "Funeral Blues"; on political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles"; on cultural and psycho…
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culture · British-American poet (1907–1973) · poet · screenwriter · literary historian · playwright · writer · librettist · university teacher · literary critic · essayist · composer · also W. H. Auden, Wystan Hugh Auden, Wystan H Auden, W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden, Wystan Auden, Auden
Born 21 February 1907 · Died 29 September 1973 · Q178698
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2024· 1 entry
2023· 1 entry
Newly declassified UK government files revealed that Auden was considered as a candidate to be the new Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 1967 following the death of John Masefield
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2020· 1 entry
The Guardian: WH Auden: 'my only duty as a poet is to defend the use of language' - archive, 4 Sept 1970
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2004· 1 entry
Released album “The Voice of the Poet”.
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1984· 1 entry
“Thousands have lived without love; none without water.”
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1973· 7 entries
Died 1973-09-29.
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“All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.”
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“Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.”
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“I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.”
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“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”
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“Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you. Rudimace always peed on our shoes.”
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Had attained the status of a respected elder statesman, and a memorial stone for him was placed in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey in 1974
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1971· 2 entries
Won United Nations Peace Medal (1971).
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Won Golden Wreath (1971).
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1970· 2 entries
Awarded St. Louis Literary Award (1970).
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His review encouraged Sacks to adapt his writing style to "be metaphorical, be mythical, be whatever you need
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1966· 1 entry
Awarded Austrian State Prize for European Literature (1966).
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1963· 2 entries
Kallman left the apartment he shared in New York with Auden, and lived during the winter in Athens while continuing to spend his summers with Auden in Austria
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And 1965 and six recommended for the 1964 prize
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1958· 2 entries
Having moved his summer home from Italy to Austria, he wrote "Good-bye to the Mezzogiorno"; other poems from this period include "Dichtung und Wahrheit: An Unwritten Poem", a prose poem about the relation between love an
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Began spending his summers in Kirchstetten, Austria, where he bought a farmhouse with the prize money of the Premio Feltrinelli awarded to him in 1957
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1956· 1 entry
Awarded National Book Award for The Shield of Achilles (1956).
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1954· 1 entry
Awarded Bollingen Prize (1954).
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1948· 2 entries
Awarded Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Age of Anxiety (1948).
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Auden began spending his summers in Europe, together with Chester Kallman, first in Ischia, Italy, where he rented a house
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1946· 2 entries
Focused again on shorter poems, notably "A Walk After Dark", "The Love Feast", and "The Fall of Rome"
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Became a naturalised citizen of the US
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1942· 1 entry
Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship (1942).
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1941· 1 entry
Kallman ended their sexual relationship because he could not accept Auden's insistence on mutual fidelity, but he and Auden remained companions for the rest of Auden's life, sharing houses and apartments from 1953 until
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1940· 2 entries
Auden wrote a long philosophical poem "New Year Letter", which appeared with miscellaneous notes and other poems in The Double Man (1941)
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Auden joined the Episcopal Church, returning to the Anglican Communion he had abandoned at fifteen
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1939· 4 entries
Based on the unique individuality of both partners
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Moved to the United States; he became an American citizen in 1946, retaining his British citizenship
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Auden worked as freelance reviewer, essayist, and lecturer, first with the GPO Film Unit, a documentary film-making branch of the post office, headed by John Grierson
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Was debated in Britain (once even in Parliament), with some seeing his emigration as a betrayal
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1938· 2 entries
Visiting China amid the Sino-Japanese War, working on their book Journey to a War (1939)
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Wrote a series of dark, ironic ballads about individual failure ("Miss Gee", "James Honeyman", "Victor")
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1937· 3 entries
And partly by reading Søren Kierkegaard and Reinhold Niebuhr; his existential, this-worldly Christianity became a central element in his life
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Went to Spain intending to drive an ambulance for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War, but was put to work writing propaganda at the Republican press and propaganda office, where he felt useless and left after a wee
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After observing the Spanish Civil War he wrote a politically engaged pamphlet poem Spain (1937); he later discarded it from his collected works
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1936· 3 entries
Auden spent three months in Iceland where he gathered material for a travel book Letters from Iceland (1937), written in collaboration with Louis MacNeice
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Auden's publisher chose the title Look, Stranger
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Auden introduced actress Therese Giehse, Mann's lover, to the writer John Hampson, and they too married so that Giehse could leave Germany
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1935· 3 entries
Worked briefly on documentary films with the GPO Film Unit, writing his famous verse commentary for Night Mail and lyrics for other films that were among his attempts in the 1930s to create a widely accessible, social
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Met and collaborated with Benjamin Britten, with whom he also worked on plays, song cycles, and a libretto
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Auden married Erika Mann (1905–1969), the bisexual novelist daughter of Thomas Mann, when it became apparent that the Nazis were intending to strip her of her German citizenship
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1934· 1 entry
Dismissed Auden's early work as "a monument to the misguided aims that prevail among contemporary poets, and the fact that
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1930· 3 entries
His first published book, Poems (1930), was accepted by T
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With his first book, Poems; it was followed in 1932 by The Orators
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Began five years as a schoolmaster in boys' schools: two years at the Larchfield Academy in Helensburgh, Scotland, then three years at the Downs School in the Malvern Hills, where he was a much-loved teacher
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1928· 2 entries
Wrote his first dramatic work, Paid on Both Sides, subtitled "A Charade", which combined style and content from the Icelandic sagas with jokes from English school life
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Studied at University of Oxford, Bachelor of Arts (1928).
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1925· 1 entry
Went up to Christ Church, Oxford, with a scholarship in biology; he changed to English by his second year, and was introduced to Old English poetry through the lectures of J
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1922· 3 entries
At 15, mostly in the styles of 19th-century romantic poets, especially Wordsworth, and later poets with rural interests, especially Thomas Hardy
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And Caliban in The Tempest in 1925, his last year at Gresham's
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When his friend Robert Medley asked him if he wrote poetry, Auden first realised his vocation was to be a poet
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1913· 1 entry
“Truth, like love and sleep, resents/Approaches that are too intense.”
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1908· 1 entry
Where his father had been appointed the School Medical Officer and Lecturer (later Professor) of Public Health
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1907· 1 entry
Born 1907-02-21.
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