Auden, W(ystan) H(ugh) 1907-73
US poet and essayist

Born in York, England, he was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, and Christ Church, Oxford. His first volume of Poems (1930) was accepted for publication by T S Eliot at Faber and Faber. In the 1930s he wrote passionately on social problems of the 1930s from a far-left standpoint, especially in his collection of poems Look, Stranger! (1936). He paid many visits to Berlin and in 1935 he married Erika Mann, the daughter of Thomas Mann, in order to provide her with a passport out of Nazi Germany. He went to Spain as a civilian in support of the Republican side and reported on it in Spain (1937), followed by a verse commentary (with prose reports by Christopher Isherwood) on the Sino-Japanese war in Journey to a War (1939). He also collaborated with Isherwood in three plays - The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935), The Ascent of F6 (1936) and On the Frontier (1938) - and with Louis MacNeice in Letters from Iceland (1937), and wrote the libretto for Ballad of Heroes by Benjamin Britten in 1939. He emigrated to New York in 1939 and was naturalized in 1946. Another Time (1940) contains some of his best-known poems. He was appointed associate professor at Michigan University, but returned to live in England when he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford (1956-61). In the USA he converted to Anglicanism, tracing this in The Sea and the Mirror (1944) and For the Time Being (1944). His later works include Nones (1951), The Shield of Achilles (1955), Homage to Clio (1960) and City Without Walls (1969). He edited many anthologies and collections, wrote much literary criticism and several librettos. A master of verse form, using fresh and accessible language, his influence as a poet has been immense.

Bibliography: H Carpenter, W H Auden: A Biography (1981)