W. H.

Auden
W. H. Auden Biography
Introduction

W. H. Auden’s work in many ways contradicts the Romantic view that a poem should be an emotional outpouring, a
sincere expression of pure subjectivity. Instead, he said, poetry is a “game of knowledge,” a clear-eyed way of
approaching objective truth.

In his own poems, this truth often adopted a moral or social guise. “Poetry,” Auden wrote, “is a way of extending our
knowledge of good and evil.” Many of his poems are intended to help men and women make good moral choices,
even though the way by which the poems do this is not always clear. Nevertheless, the body of Auden’s poetry is
exemplary for its vivid and strongly felt social conscience. His work also is marked by his fine ear and his instinct for
rhythm, structure, and sound. This seamless joining of intelligence and verbal music signals that Auden is one of the
master craftsmen of modern poetry.

W. H. Auden Biography (Masterpieces of World Literature, Critical Edition)

W. H. Auden Published by Salem Press, Inc.

Wystan Hugh Auden (AWD-ehn) was born on February 21, 1907, in York, England. He was the youngest son of
George and Constance Auden. His father and mother belonged to a very distinct niche of early twentieth century
Edwardian society—that of the politically liberal, scientific intelligensia. He came, nevertheless, from a very devout
Anglo-Catholic home, and his early experiences with the Church would remain with him when he returned to it later
in life. As a child, he was fascinated by the “magic” of Church of England rites, and this enchantment with the magical
and the mystical also remained a lifelong characteristic. Auden’s father was a distinguished physician and professor of
medicine; his mother was a nurse. By all accounts, his family environment was loving, intelligent,
clear-thinking—traits that were foremost in Auden as an adult. He received the standard schooling of an
upper-middle-class male child in early twentieth century England. Beginning his education at St. Edmund’s
preparatory school at eight years of age, he attended Gresham’s School at age thirteen.

At first, Auden intended to become a scientist, like his father. He was principally interested in both engineering and
biology and planned to become a mining engineer. This career path was soon overtaken by another, however; while he
was still at Gresham’s, he began to write poetry. His first poem was published when he was seventeen. This early
publication foreshadowed the fame that would come to him just a few years later while he was still in college. He
entered Oxford in 1925 and very soon afterward had acquired a faithful clique. Those who knew him during his
university years remember him as a rising star, someone who would clearly make a name for himself as a poet and
thinker. A group of men who would later also be important poets formed around him— Stephen Spender, C. Day
Lewis, and Louis MacNeice. Spender privately printed the first collection of Auden’s poems in 1928, the year that
Auden graduated from Oxford.

After graduation, he spend a year abroad, the traditional Wanderjahr of upper-class young Englishmen. When his
parents asked in which European city he would like to spend his year, Auden surprisingly answered that he wanted to
live in Berlin. Germany in the years of the Weimar Republic, before Adolf Hitler came to power, was an exciting
place—stimulating, racy, intellectually bold. There, Auden became acquainted with the politically charged plays of
Bertolt Brecht and the sexy, witty songs of the Berlin cabarets. He perfected his German during his year abroad, and
throughout his life he would be influenced by German literature, both classical and modern.

When he returned to England, he became a schoolmaster, first at Larchfield Academy, in Scotland, then at Downs
School, near Malvern, England. At the same time, however, his literary reputation was growing. His Poems appeared
in 1930, firmly establishing his reputation as the most brilliant of England’s younger generation of poets. Perhaps
under the influence of Brecht, he had begun writing works that were broadly “dramatic.” Paid on Both Sides: A
Charade (pb. 1930, pr. 1931) reinforced the literary world’s opinion of Auden as an important young writer.

Auden’s adult life has frequently been divided into four segments, a division suggested by the poet himself in an
introduction to his Collected Shorter Poems, 1930-1944 (1950). The first segment runs from his undergraduate days
through 1932, the second comprises the period from 1933 to 1938, and the third extends from 1939 to 1946; the fourth
segment began in 1948. The first segment entails the period of his early fame—his notoriety as a brilliant, precocious
undergraduate and the publication of his first important poems. This era of Auden’s life might also be viewed as his
“Freudian period”; in part, he viewed the work of this era as a kind of therapy, giving free play to fantasy and
uncovering hidden impulses. Yet even this early poetry shows the social and political awareness that would infuse his
poems throughout the 1930’s.

By 1933, partly under the influence of Brecht and in reaction to the collapse of his beloved Weimar Republic, Auden
became an outspoken critic of the political establishment—his life’s second, political, segment. He became
increasingly committed to left-wing causes and in 1937 journeyed to Spain as a stretcher-bearer in the struggle of the
Loyalist Left against the forces of fascism. He also made use of theater as a way to gain wider public expression of his
beliefs; he was a cofounder of the Group Theatre in 1932 and collaborated with Christopher Isherwood, a longtime
friend, on several dramatic works. Moreover, he wrote film scripts for the General Post Office film unit, a
government-sponsored creative effort that, among other subjects, frequently made films about working-class life in
Britain.

Auden traveled widely during the 1930’s, not only to Spain but also to Iceland (his family name, as “Audun,” is
mentioned in the Icelandic sagas), China, and the United States. His experience with the Spanish Loyalist armies had
left him disillusioned with the Left, and his fame in England apparently meant little to him by this time. Thus, in 1939,
he moved to the United States, marking the third period in his life story. Once again, he became a teacher—this time
on the university level, as a member of the faculties of the New School for Social Research, the University of
Michigan, and Swarthmore, Bennington, Bryn Mawr, and Barnard colleges. During the war years, Auden turned
inward; he returned to the Anglo-Catholicism of his youth and wrote several long poems that explore his newly found
meditative introspection. The last of these, The Age of Anxiety(1947), earned him the Pulitzer Prize in 1948.

During the last period of his life, from 1948 until his death in Vienna on September 29, 1973, Auden divided his time
among the United States, Italy, and Austria. Eventually, in 1972, he established residence in Oxford, where he had
earlier been named professor of poetry. He continued to write prolifically, although no long poems appeared after
1948. He published two volumes of prose, The Dyer’s Hand, and Other Essays (1962) and A Certain World (1970),
translations, and he collaborated on the librettos of several operas.

Many students of Auden’s biography are struck by the series of enthusiasms that colored his life. Marxist, Freudian,
Anglo-Catholic—a lover of Icelandic sagas, William Shakespeare, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—Auden
continued until his last years to hold strong beliefs that are often central to his poetry. However, he was also a very
private, introspective man. His love lyrics are among the twentieth century’s most celebrated. His later
Anglo-Catholicism revealed a powerful inward-turning element in his character, and his religious poems are obviously
the result of much soul-searching.