View source for W. H. Auden

{{Short description|British-American poet (1907–1973)}}
{{Good article}}
{{Use British English|date=October 2013}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2024}}
{{Infobox poet
| name             = W. H. Auden
| image            = AudenVanVechten1939.jpg
| caption          = Auden in 1939
| birth_name       = Wystan Hugh Auden
| birth_date       = {{Birth date|1907|2|21|df=yes}}
| birth_place      = [[York]], [[Yorkshire]], England
| death_date       = {{Death date and age|1973|9|29|1907|2|21|df=yes}}
| death_place      = [[Vienna]], Austria
| resting_place    =
| resting_place_coordinates = <!-- {{coord|LAT|LONG|display=inline,title}} -->
<!-- |residence     = [[York]], Birmingham, [[Oxford]] (UK); Berlin (Germany); [[Helensburgh]], [[Colwall]], London (UK); New York City, [[Ann Arbor]], [[Swarthmore, Pennsylvania|Swarthmore]] (US); [[Ischia]] (Italy); [[Kirchstetten]] (Austria); Oxford (UK) -->
| citizenship      = {{unbulleted list|United Kingdom <!-- (birth) -->|United States (from 1946)}}
| education        = [[Christ Church, Oxford]] ([[MA (Oxon)|MA]])
| alma_mater       =
| occupation       = Poet
| spouse           = {{marriage|[[Erika Mann]]|1935|reason=[[marriage of convenience|of convenience]]<!-- (unconsummated marriage, to provide her with a [[British passport]]) -->}}
| relations        = {{unbulleted list|[[George Augustus Auden]] (father)|[[Constance Rosalie Bicknell Auden]] (mother)|[[John Bicknell Auden]] (brother)|[[George Bernard Auden]] (brother)}}
}}

'''Wystan Hugh Auden''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|w|ɪ|s|t|ən|_|ˈ|h|juː|_|ˈ|ɔː|d|ən}} {{respell|WIST|ən|_|HYOO|_|AWD|ən}}; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973<ref>The date on the death certificate; the 28 September date on his grave was an error.</ref>) 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 (literature)|tone]], [[poetic form|form]], and [[content (media)|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 psychological themes, such as ''[[The Age of Anxiety]]''; and on religious themes, such as "[[For the Time Being]]" and "[[Horae Canonicae]]".<ref>{{cite book
| last = Auden
| first = W.&nbsp;H.
| editor-first = Edward
| editor-last = Mendelson
| editor-link=Edward Mendelson
| title = Prose, Volume II: 1939–1948
| publisher = [[Princeton University Press]]
| location = Princeton
| year = 2002
| page = 478
| isbn = 978-0-691-08935-5}} Auden used the phrase "Anglo-American Poets" in 1943, implicitly referring to himself and [[T. S. Eliot]].</ref><ref name="OEDdef">The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the ''OED'' (2008 revision) is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England (or Britain) and America."{{cite web
| title = Oxford English Dictionary (access by subscription)
| url = http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50008500?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=Anglo-American&first=1&max_to_show=10
| access-date = 25 May 2009
}} See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in {{cite book
| title = Chambers 20th Century Dictionary
| year = 1969
| page = 45 | title-link = Chambers 20th Century Dictionary
}} See also the definition "an American, especially a citizen of the United States, of English origin or descent" in {{cite book
| title = Merriam Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition
| year = 1969
| page = 103 }} See also the definition "a native or descendant of a native of England who has settled in or become a citizen of America, esp. of the United States" from ''The Random House Dictionary'', 2009, available online at {{cite web
| title = Dictionary.com
| url = http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Anglo-American
| access-date = 25 May 2009
| archive-date = 4 March 2016
| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160304002757/http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anglo-american
| url-status = live
}}</ref><ref name="Companion">{{cite book
 | editor-last = Smith
 | editor-first = Stan
 | title = The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden
 | year = 2004
 | publisher = [[Cambridge University Press]]
 | location = Cambridge
 | isbn = 978-0-521-82962-5}}</ref>

Auden was born in [[York]] and grew up in and near [[Birmingham]] in a professional, middle-class family. He attended various English independent (or [[Public school (United Kingdom)|public]]) schools and studied English at [[Christ Church, Oxford]]. After a few months in Berlin in 1928–29, he spent five years (1930–1935) teaching in British private [[Preparatory school (United Kingdom)|preparatory schools]]. In 1939, he moved to the United States; he became an American citizen in 1946, retaining his British citizenship. Auden taught from 1941 to 1945 in American universities, followed by occasional visiting professorships in the 1950s.

Auden came to wide public attention in 1930 with his first book, ''[[Poems (Auden)|Poems]]''; it was followed in 1932 by ''[[The Orators]]''. Three plays written in collaboration with [[Christopher Isherwood]] between 1935 and 1938 built his reputation as a left-wing political writer. Auden moved to the United States partly to escape this reputation, and his work in the 1940s, including the [[long poem]]s "For the Time Being" and "[[The Sea and the Mirror]]", focused on religious themes. He won the [[Pulitzer Prize for Poetry]] for his 1947 long poem ''The Age of Anxiety'', the title of which became a popular phrase describing the modern era.<ref name="RDH-NoPage"/> From 1956 to 1961, he was [[Professor of Poetry at Oxford]]; his lectures were popular with students and faculty and served as the basis for his 1962 prose collection ''[[The Dyer's Hand]]''.

Auden was a prolific writer of prose essays and reviews on literary, political, psychological, and religious subjects, and he worked at various times on documentary films, poetic plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his career he was both controversial and influential. Critical views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive (treating him as a lesser figure than [[W. B. Yeats]] and [[T. S. Eliot]]) to strongly affirmative (as in [[Joseph Brodsky]]'s statement that he had "the greatest mind of the twentieth century"). After his death, his poems became known to a much wider public through films, broadcasts, and popular media.

==Life==
===Childhood===
[[File:54 Bootham York 4.jpg|thumb|upright|Auden's birthplace in York]]
Auden was born at [[54 Bootham]], [[York]], England, to [[George Augustus Auden]] (1872–1957), a physician, and Constance Rosalie Auden (née Bicknell; 1869–1941), who had trained (but never served) as a missionary nurse.<ref>Carpenter (1981) pp. 1–12.</ref> He was the third of three sons; the eldest, George Bernard Auden (1900–1978), became a farmer, while the second, [[John Bicknell Auden]] (1903–1991), became a geologist.<ref name="Wystan">The name Wystan derives from the 9th-century [[Wigstan of Mercia|St Wystan]], who was murdered by Beorhtfrith, the son of [[Beorhtwulf]], king of Mercia, after Wystan objected to Beorhtfrith's plan to marry Wystan's mother. His remains were reburied at [[Repton]], Derbyshire, where they became the object of a cult; the [[St Wystan's Church, Repton|parish church of Repton]] is dedicated to St Wystan. Auden's father, [[George Augustus Auden]], was educated at [[Repton School]].</ref> The Audens were minor gentry with a strong [[clergy|clerical]] tradition, originally of [[Rowley Regis]], later of [[Horninglow]], Staffordshire.<ref>Burke's Landed Gentry, 18th edition, vol. I, ed. Peter Townend, 1965, Auden formerly of Horninglow pedigree</ref>

Auden, whose grandfathers were both [[Church of England]] clergymen, grew up in an [[Anglo-Catholic]] household that followed a "[[High church|high]]" form of [[Anglicanism]], with doctrine and ritual resembling those of [[Catholicism]].<ref name="CarpenterNoPage">{{cite book |first = Humphrey |last = Carpenter |author-link = Humphrey Carpenter |title = W. H. Auden: A Biography |publisher = George Allen & Unwin |year = 1981 |location = London |isbn = 978-0-04-928044-1}}</ref><ref name="RDH-NoPage">{{cite book |first = Richard |last = Davenport-Hines |title = Auden |author-link = Richard Davenport-Hines |publisher = Heinemann |location = London |year = 1995 |isbn = 978-0-434-17507-9}}</ref> He traced his love of music and language partly to the church services of his childhood.<ref name="DNB"/> He believed he was of [[Icelanders|Icelandic]] descent, and his lifelong fascination with Icelandic legends and [[Old Norse]] sagas is evident in his work.<ref>{{cite book |first = Peter |last = Davidson |title = The Idea of North |publisher = Reaktion |location = London |year = 2005 |isbn = 978-1861892300}}</ref>

His family moved to Homer Road in [[Solihull]], near [[Birmingham]], in 1908,<ref name="DNB">{{cite ODNB |first=Edward |last = Mendelson |author-link=Edward Mendelson |title = Auden, Wystan Hugh (1907–1973) |edition = online |date = January 2011 |doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/30775 |url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30775 |access-date = 26 May 2013 }}{{Subscription or libraries}}</ref> where his father had been appointed the School Medical Officer and Lecturer (later Professor) of Public Health. Auden's lifelong [[psychoanalytic]] interests began in his father's library. From the age of eight he attended boarding schools, returning home for holidays.<ref>Carpenter (1981) pp. 16–20, 23–28.</ref> His visits to the [[Pennines|Pennine]] landscape and its declining lead-mining industry figure in many of his poems; the remote decaying mining village of [[Rookhope]] was for him a "sacred landscape", evoked in a late poem, "Amor Loci".<ref>Carpenter (1981) pp. 13, 23.</ref><ref>{{cite book | first1 = Alan |last1= Myers |author-link=Alan Myers (translator) |first2 = Robert |last2 = Forsythe |title = W. H. Auden: Pennine Poet |publisher = North Pennines Heritage Trust |location = Nenthead |year = 1999 |isbn = 978-0-9513535-7-8}}</ref> Until he was fifteen he expected to become a mining engineer, but his passion for words had already begun. He wrote later: "words so excite me that a pornographic story, for example, excites me sexually more than a living person can do."<ref>{{cite book |first = W. H. |last = Auden |title = The Prolific and the Devourer |publisher = Ecco |location = New York |year = 1993 |page = [https://archive.org/details/prolificdevourer00aude/page/10 10] |isbn = 978-0-88001-345-1 |url = https://archive.org/details/prolificdevourer00aude/page/10 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |first = Frank |last = Partridge |title = North Pennines: Poetry in Motion |work = The Independent |date = 23 February 2007 |url = https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/uk/north-pennines-poetry-in-motion-437571.html |access-date = 2 December 2016 |archive-date = 14 February 2022 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20220214172129/https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/uk/north-pennines-poetry-in-motion-437571.html |url-status = live }}</ref>

===Education===
[[File:St Eds Back.jpg|thumb|Auden's School at [[Hindhead]] in Surrey]]
Auden attended [[St Edmund's School, Hindhead]], Surrey, where he met [[Christopher Isherwood]], later famous in his own right as a novelist.<ref>{{cite book|first=Harry |last=Blamires|title=A Guide to twentieth century literature in English|year=1983|page= 130}}</ref> At thirteen he went to [[Gresham's School]] in [[Holt, Norfolk]]; there, in 1922, when his friend [[Robert Medley]] asked him if he wrote poetry, Auden first realised his vocation was to be a poet.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/> Soon after, he "discover(ed) that he (had) lost his faith" (through a gradual realisation that he had lost interest in religion, not through any decisive change of views).<ref>{{cite book |first=W. H. |last=Auden |title = Forewords and Afterwords |publisher = Random House |location = New York |year = 1973 |page = 517 |isbn = 978-0-394-48359-7}}</ref> In school productions of [[Shakespeare]], he played Katherina in ''[[The Taming of the Shrew]]'' in 1922,<ref>''The Times'', 5 July 1922 (Issue 43075), p. 12, col. D</ref> and [[Caliban]] in ''The Tempest'' in 1925, his last year at Gresham's.<ref>[[Hugh Wright (schoolmaster)|Wright, Hugh]], "Auden and Gresham's", ''Conference & Common Room'', Vol. 44, No. 2, Summer 2007.</ref> A review of his performance as Katherina noted that despite a poor wig, he had been able "to infuse considerable dignity into his passionate outbursts".<ref>[https://www.greshamsatwar.co.uk/Filename.ashx?systemFileName=GJ1922JUL.pdf#page=2 "The Taming of the Shrew"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230109070743/https://www.greshamsatwar.co.uk/Filename.ashx?systemFileName=GJ1922JUL.pdf#page=2 |date=9 January 2023 }}, ''The Gresham'', 29 July 1922. Retrieved 8 January 2023</ref>

His first published poems appeared in the school magazine in 1923.<ref name="JuveniliaNoPage">{{cite book |first = W. H. |last = Auden |editor-first = Katherine |editor-last = Bucknell |title = Juvenilia: Poems, 1922–1928 |publisher = Princeton University Press |location = Princeton |year = 1994 |isbn = 978-0-691-03415-7 |url = https://archive.org/details/juveniliapoems1900aude }}</ref> Auden later wrote a chapter on Gresham's for [[Graham Greene]]'s ''The Old School: Essays by Divers Hands'' (1934).<ref>{{cite book |first=W. H. |last=Auden |editor-first=Graham |editor-last=Greene |title=The Old School: Essays by Divers Hands |location=London |publisher=Jonathan Cape |year=1934 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WkJAAAAAIAAJ |access-date=24 May 2016 |archive-date=21 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230121032926/https://books.google.com/books?id=WkJAAAAAIAAJ |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1925 he 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. R. R. Tolkien]]. Friends he met at Oxford include [[Cecil Day-Lewis]], [[Louis MacNeice]], and [[Stephen Spender]] – Auden and these three were commonly though misleadingly identified in the 1930s as the "[[Auden Group]]" for their shared (but not identical) left-wing views. Auden left Oxford in 1928 with a [[British undergraduate degree classification|third-class]] degree.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/><ref name="DNB"/>

Auden was reintroduced to Christopher Isherwood in 1925 by his fellow student [[A. S. T. Fisher]]. For the next few years Auden sent poems to Isherwood for comments and criticism; the two maintained a sexual friendship in intervals between their relations with others. In 1935–39 they collaborated on three plays and a travel book.<ref>{{cite book | first=Richard |last=Davenport-Hines | title = Auden | author-link = Richard Davenport-Hines
 | publisher = Heinemann | location = London | year = 1995 | at = ch. 3 | isbn = 978-0-434-17507-9}}</ref>

From his Oxford years onward, Auden's friends uniformly described him as funny, extravagant, sympathetic, generous, and, partly by his own choice, lonely. In groups he was often dogmatic and overbearing in a comic way; in more private settings he was diffident and shy except when certain of his welcome. He was punctual in his habits, and obsessive about meeting deadlines, while living amidst physical disorder.<ref name="RDH-NoPage"/>

===Britain and Europe, 1928–1938===
In late 1928, Auden left Britain for nine months, going to Berlin, perhaps partly as an escape from English repressiveness. In Berlin, he first experienced the political and economic unrest that became one of his central subjects.<ref name="DNB" /> Around the same time, Stephen Spender privately printed a small pamphlet of Auden's ''[[Poems (Auden)|Poems]]'' in an edition of about 45 copies, distributed among Auden's and Spender's friends and family; this edition is usually referred to as ''Poems'' [1928] to avoid confusion with Auden's commercially published 1930 volume.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Poems. Auden's first published collection of poems, published by Stephen Spender|url=https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/poems-audens-first-published-collection-of-poems-published-by-stephen-spender|access-date=29 January 2021|website=The British Library|archive-date=12 April 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210412044539/https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/poems-audens-first-published-collection-of-poems-published-by-stephen-spender|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bl.uk/eblj/1988articles/pdf/article15.pdf|title=Poems|website=bl.uk|access-date=25 July 2021|archive-date=15 April 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210415074509/https://www.bl.uk/eblj/1988articles/pdf/article15.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>

On returning to Britain in 1929 he worked briefly as a tutor. In 1930 his first published book, ''Poems'' (1930), was accepted by [[T. S. Eliot]] for [[Faber and Faber]], and the same firm remained the British publisher of all the books he published thereafter. In 1930, he 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 (Herefordshire)|the Downs School]] in the [[Malvern Hills]], where he was a much-loved teacher.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/> At the Downs, in June 1933, he experienced what he later described as a "Vision of [[Agape]]", while sitting with three fellow teachers at the school, when he suddenly found that he loved them for themselves, that their existence had infinite value for him; this experience, he said, later influenced his decision to return to the Anglican Church in 1940.<ref>{{cite book
 | first=W. H. |last=Auden | title = Forewords and Afterwords | publisher = [[Random House]] | location = New York | year = 1973 | page = 69 | isbn = 978-0-394-48359-7}}</ref>

During these years Auden's erotic interests focused, as he later said, on an idealised "Alter Ego"<ref>{{cite book
 | first=Edward |last=Mendelson |author-link = Edward Mendelson | title = Later Auden | url=https://archive.org/details/laterauden0000mend | url-access=registration | publisher = [[Farrar, Straus and Giroux]] | year = 1999 | location = New York | page = [https://archive.org/details/laterauden0000mend/page/35 35] | isbn = 978-0-374-18408-7}}</ref> rather than on individual people. His relationships (and his unsuccessful courtships) tended to be unequal either in age or intelligence; his sexual relations were transient, although some evolved into long friendships. He contrasted these relationships with what he later regarded as the "marriage" (his word) of equals that he began with [[Chester Kallman]] in 1939, based on the unique individuality of both partners.<ref name="EarlyNoPage">{{cite book | first=Edward |last= Mendelson | author-link = Edward Mendelson | title = Early Auden | url=https://archive.org/details/earlyauden0000mend | url-access=registration | publisher=[[Viking]] | year = 1981 | location = New York | isbn = 978-0-670-28712-3}}</ref>

In 1935 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.<!-- Her uncle, [[Heinrich Mann]], was the first person to be stripped of German citizenship when the Nazis took office.--><ref name="Lebor">{{cite book|first1=Adam |last1=Lebor |first2=Roger |last2=Boyles|publisher=Simon & Schuster|year=2000|title=Surviving Hitler, Choices, Corruption and Compromise in the Third Reich|isbn=0-684-85811-8}}</ref> Mann had asked Christopher Isherwood if he would marry her so she could become a British subject. He declined but suggested she approach Auden, who readily agreed to a [[marriage of convenience]].<ref name="Snyderr">{{cite book|author-link=Louis Leo Snyder|first=Louis L|last= Snyder|publisher=Marlowe & Co|year=1976|title= Encyclopedia of the Third Reich|isbn=1569249172}}</ref> Mann and Auden never lived together, but remained on good terms throughout their lives and were still married when Mann died in 1969. She left him a small bequest in her will.<ref name=DMartin>{{cite magazine|first1=David|last1=Martin|first2=Edward|last2=Mendelson|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/04/24/why-auden-married/|title=Why Auden Married|date=24 April 2014|access-date=10 May 2017|magazine=[[The New York Review of Books]]|archive-date=26 October 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171026164005/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/04/24/why-auden-married/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=BEEBhis>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/auden_wh.shtml|title=WH Auden (1907–1973)|year=2014|access-date=10 May 2017|work=[[BBC History]]|archive-date=11 March 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170311080348/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/auden_wh.shtml|url-status=live}}</ref> In 1936, Auden introduced actress [[Therese Giehse]], Mann's lover, to the writer [[John Hampson (novelist)|John Hampson]], and they too married so that Giehse could leave Germany.<ref name=DMartin/>

From 1935 until he left Britain early in 1939, 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]]. Through his work for the Film Unit in 1935 he met and collaborated with [[Benjamin Britten]], with whom he also worked on plays, song cycles, and a libretto.<ref>{{cite book | first=Donald |last= Mitchell | title = Britten and Auden in the Thirties: the year 1936 | publisher=Faber and Faber | year = 1981 | location = London | isbn = 978-0-571-11715-4}}</ref> Auden's plays in the 1930s were performed by the [[Group Theatre (London)|Group Theatre]], in productions that he supervised to varying degrees.<ref name="DNB"/>

His work now reflected his belief that any good artist must be "more than a bit of a reporting journalist".<ref>{{cite book| first=W. H. |last=Auden|editor-first= Edward |editor-last=Mendelson |editor-link=Edward Mendelson|title = Prose and travel books in prose and verse, Volume I: 1926–1938| publisher = Princeton University Press| location = Princeton| year = 1996| page = 138| isbn = 978-0-691-06803-9}}</ref> In 1936, Auden spent three months in Iceland where he gathered material for a travel book ''[[Letters from Iceland]]'' (1937), written in collaboration with Louis MacNeice. In 1937, he went to Spain intending to drive an ambulance for the [[Second Spanish Republic|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 week.<ref>The Good Comrade, Memoirs of [[Kate Mangan]] and [[Jan Kurzke]], [[International Institute of Social History]] (IISH), Amsterdam.</ref> He returned to England after a brief visit to the front at Sarineña. His seven-week visit to Spain affected him deeply, and his social views grew more complex as he found political realities to be more ambiguous and troubling than he had imagined.<ref name="EarlyNoPage"/><ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/> Again attempting to combine reportage and art, he and Isherwood spent six months in 1938 visiting China amid the [[Second Sino-Japanese War|Sino-Japanese War]], working on their book ''[[Journey to a War]]'' (1939). On their way back to England they stayed briefly in New York and decided to move to the United States. Auden spent late 1938 partly in England, partly in Brussels.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/>

Many of Auden's poems during the 1930s and after were inspired by unconsummated love, and in the 1950s he summarised his emotional life in a famous couplet: "If equal affection cannot be / Let the more loving one be me" ("The More Loving One"). He had a gift for friendship and, starting in the late 1930s, a strong wish for the stability of marriage; in a letter to his friend [[James Stern (writer)|James Stern]] he called marriage "the ''only'' subject."<ref>{{cite book| first=W. H. |last=Auden|editor-first= Katherine |editor-last=Bucknell |editor2-first=Nicholas |editor2-last=Jenkins| title = In Solitude, For Company: W. H. Auden after 1940, unpublished prose and recent criticism (Auden Studies 3)| publisher = Clarendon Press| location = Oxford| year = 1995| page = 88| isbn = 978-0-19-818294-8}}</ref> Throughout his life, Auden performed charitable acts, sometimes in public, as in his 1935 marriage of convenience to Erika Mann,<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/> but, especially in later years, more often in private. He was embarrassed if they were publicly revealed, as when his gift to his friend [[Dorothy Day]] for the [[Catholic Worker]] movement was reported on the front page of ''The New York Times'' in 1956.<ref>{{cite news | first = Will | last = Lissner | title = Poet and Judge Assist a Samaritan | newspaper = The New York Times | date = 2 March 1956 | pages = 1, 39 | url = https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/03/02/86535523.pdf | access-date = 26 May 2013 | archive-date = 21 January 2023 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230121032927/https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/03/02/86535523.html?pdf_redirect=true&site=false | url-status = live }}</ref>

===United States and Europe, 1939–1973===
[[File:Isherwood and Auden by Carl van Vechten, 1939.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Christopher Isherwood]] (left) and W. H. Auden (right) photographed by [[Carl Van Vechten]], 6 February 1939]]
{{anchor|Chester Kallman}}
Auden and Isherwood sailed to New York City in January 1939, entering on temporary visas. Their departure from Britain was later seen by many as a betrayal, and Auden's reputation suffered.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/> In April 1939, Isherwood moved to California, and he and Auden saw each other only intermittently in later years. Around this time, Auden met the poet [[Chester Kallman]], who became his lover for the next two years (Auden described their relation as a "marriage" that began with a cross-country "honeymoon" journey).<ref>{{cite book | first= Edward |last=Mendelson | author-link = Edward Mendelson | title = Later Auden
 | url= https://archive.org/details/laterauden0000mend | url-access= registration | publisher = Farrar, Straus and Giroux | location = New York | year = 1999 | page = [https://archive.org/details/laterauden0000mend/page/46 46] | isbn = 978-0-374-18408-7}}</ref>

In 1941 Kallman ended their sexual relationship because he could not accept Auden's insistence on mutual fidelity,<ref name="FarnanNoPage">{{cite book
 | first=Dorothy J. |last=Farnan | title = Auden in Love | url=https://archive.org/details/audeninlove0000farn | url-access=registration | publisher = Simon and Schuster | year = 1984 | location = New York | isbn = 978-0-671-50418-2}}</ref> but he and Auden remained companions for the rest of Auden's life, sharing houses and apartments from 1953 until Auden's death.<ref>{{cite book
 | first=Thekla|last=Clark | title = Wystan and Chester | publisher = Faber & Faber | year = 1995 | location = London | isbn = 978-0-571-17591-8}}</ref> Auden dedicated both editions of his collected poetry (1945/50 and 1966) to Isherwood and Kallman.<ref name="LaterNoPage">{{cite book
 | first=Edward|last=Mendelson | author-link = Edward Mendelson | title = Later Auden | url=https://archive.org/details/laterauden0000mend| url-access=registration| publisher = Farrar, Straus and Giroux | year = 1999 | location = New York | isbn = 978-0-374-18408-7}}</ref>

In 1940–41 Auden lived in a house at 7 Middagh Street in [[Brooklyn Heights]], that he shared with [[Carson McCullers]], Benjamin Britten, and others, which became a famous centre of artistic life, nicknamed "[[February House]]".<ref>{{cite book| first = Sherrill| last = Tippins| title = February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America| publisher = Houghton Mifflin| location = Boston| year = 2005| isbn = 978-0-618-41911-1| url = https://archive.org/details/februaryhouse00tipp}}</ref> In 1940, Auden joined the [[Episcopal Church in the United States of America|Episcopal Church]], returning to the Anglican Communion he had abandoned at fifteen. His reconversion was influenced partly by what he called the "sainthood" of [[Charles Williams (UK writer)|Charles Williams]],<ref>{{cite book | editor-first=James A. |editor-last=Pike | editor-link = James Pike | title = Modern Canterbury Pilgrims | url=https://archive.org/details/moderncanterbury00pike | url-access=registration | publisher = Morehouse-Gorham | year = 1956 | location = New York | page = [https://archive.org/details/moderncanterbury00pike/page/42 42]}}</ref> whom he had met in 1937, and partly by reading [[Søren Kierkegaard]] and [[Reinhold Niebuhr]]; his [[existential]], this-worldly Christianity became a central element in his life.<ref name="Kirsch">{{cite book | first=Arthur |last=Kirsch | title = Auden and Christianity | publisher = Yale University Press | location = New Haven | year = 2005
 | isbn = 978-0-300-10814-9}}</ref>

[[File:Auden's grave.JPG|thumb|upright|Auden's grave at Kirchstetten (Lower Austria)]]
After Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Auden told the British embassy in Washington that he would return to the UK if needed. He was told that, among those his age (32), only qualified personnel were needed. In 1941–42 he taught English at the [[University of Michigan]]. He was called for the draft in the United States Army in August 1942, but was rejected on medical grounds. He had been awarded a [[Guggenheim Fellowship]] for 1942–43 but did not use it, choosing instead to teach at [[Swarthmore College]] in 1942–45.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/>

In mid-1945, after the end of [[World War II]] in Europe, he was in Germany with the [[Strategic Bombing Survey (Europe)|US Strategic Bombing Survey]], studying the effects of Allied bombing on German morale, an experience that affected his postwar work as his visit to Spain had affected him earlier.<ref name="LaterNoPage"/> On his return, he settled in [[Manhattan]], working as a freelance writer, a lecturer at [[The New School]] for Social Research, and a visiting professor at [[Bennington College|Bennington]], [[Smith College|Smith]], and other American colleges. In 1946, he became a [[naturalised citizen]] of the US.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/><ref name="DNB"/>

In 1948 Auden began spending his summers in Europe, together with Chester Kallman, first in [[Ischia]], Italy, where he rented a house. Starting in 1958 he began spending his summers in [[Kirchstetten]], Austria, where he bought a farmhouse with the prize money of the ''[[Feltrinelli Prize|Premio Feltrinelli]]'' awarded to him in 1957.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.salzburg.com/nachrichten/oesterreich/kultur/sn/artikel/gedenkstaette-fuer-w-h-auden-in-kirchstetten-neu-gestaltet-164965|title=Gedenkstätte für W. H. Auden in Kirchstetten neu gestaltet|first=Salzburger|last=Nachrichten|website=salzburg.com|date=8 September 2015|access-date=30 September 2017|archive-date=26 January 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160126054952/http://www.salzburg.com/nachrichten/oesterreich/kultur/sn/artikel/gedenkstaette-fuer-w-h-auden-in-kirchstetten-neu-gestaltet-164965/|url-status=live}}</ref> He said that he shed tears of joy at owning a home for the first time.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/> His later poetry, mostly written in Austria, includes his sequence "Thanksgiving for a Habitat" about his Kirchstetten home.<ref>Quinn, Justin (2013). "At Home in Italy and Austria, 1948–1973." Sharpe, Tony (ed.) ''W. H. Auden in Context.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 56–66. {{ISBN|978-0-521-19657-4}}</ref> Auden's letters and papers sent to his friend the translator Stella Musulin (1915–1996), available online, provide insights into his Austrian years.<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Andorfer |first1=Peter |last2=Frühwirth |first2=Timo |last3=Mayer |first3=Sandra |last4=Mendelson |first4=Edward |last5=Neundlinger |first5=Helmut |last6=Stoxreiter |first6=Daniel |year=2022 |title=Auden Musulin Papers: A Digital Edition of W. H. Auden's Letters to Stella Musulin |url=https://amp.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/ |url-status=live |publisher=Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Austrian Academy of Sciences |access-date=11 July 2022 |archive-date=11 July 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220711074235/https://amp.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/ }}</ref>

In 1956–61 Auden was [[Professor of Poetry]] at [[Oxford University]], where he was required to give three lectures each year. This fairly light workload allowed him to continue to spend winter in New York, where he lived at 77 [[St. Mark's Place]] in Manhattan's [[East Village, Manhattan|East Village]], and to spend summer in Europe, spending only three weeks each year lecturing in Oxford. He earned his income mostly from readings and lecture tours, and by writing for ''[[The New Yorker]],'' ''[[The New York Review of Books]],'' and other magazines.<ref name="DNB" />

In 1963 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. Auden spent the winter of 1964-1965 in Berlin through an [[DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program|artist-in-residence program]] of the [[Ford Foundation]].<ref>Carpenter (1981) pp. 410-411</ref><ref>Davenport-Hines, Richard (1995). ''Auden''. London: Heinemann. pp. 314–315. {{ISBN|0-434-17507-2}}</ref>

Following some years of lobbying by his friend [[David Luke]], Auden's old college, Christ Church, in February 1972 offered him a cottage on its grounds to live in; he moved his books and other possessions from New York to Oxford in September 1972,<ref>Davenport-Hines, Richard (1995). ''Auden''. London: Heinemann. pp. 335–337. {{ISBN|0-434-17507-2}}</ref> while continuing to spend summers in Austria with Kallman. He spent only one winter in Oxford before his death in 1973.

<!-- ==Death== -->
Auden died at 66 of heart failure at the Altenburgerhof Hotel in Vienna overnight on 28–29 September 1973, a few hours after giving a reading of his poems for the Austrian Society for Literature at the [[Palais Pálffy]]. He had intended to return to Oxford the following day. He was buried on 4 October in Kirchstetten, and a memorial stone was placed in Westminster Abbey in London a year later.<ref>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography</ref><ref>{{cite news|first=Israel|last=Shrenker|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1973/09/30/archives/w-h-auden-dies-in-vienna-w-h-auden-dies-in-vienna-at-the-age-of-66.html?mcubz=1|title=W. H. Auden Dies in Vienna|date=30 September 1973|access-date=20 September 2017|newspaper=The New York Times|archive-date=14 February 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220214161853/https://www.nytimes.com/1973/09/30/archives/w-h-auden-dies-in-vienna-w-h-auden-dies-in-vienna-at-the-age-of-66.html?mcubz=1|url-status=live}}</ref>

==Work==
{{see also|Bibliography of W. H. Auden}}

Auden published about four hundred poems, including seven long poems (two of them book-length). His poetry was encyclopaedic in scope and method, ranging in style from obscure twentieth-century modernism to the lucid traditional forms such as [[ballads]] and [[Limerick (poetry)|limerick]]s, from [[doggerel]] through [[haiku]] and [[villanelles]] to a "Christmas Oratorio" and a [[baroque]] [[eclogue]] in Anglo-Saxon meters.<ref name="FullerNoPage">{{cite book
 | last = Fuller
 | first = John
 | author-link = John Fuller (poet)
 | title = W. H. Auden: a commentary
 | publisher = Faber and Faber
 | location = London
 | year = 1998
 | isbn = 978-0-571-19268-7}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Companion"/><ref name="EarlyNoPage"/>

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]], and 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 .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. than any sexual relations I have had."<ref>{{cite book
 | last = Davenport-Hines
 | first = Richard
 | author-link = Richard Davenport-Hines
 | title = Auden
 | publisher = Heinemann
 | location = London
 | year = 1995
 | page = 137
 | isbn = 978-0-434-17507-9}}</ref>

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 he had never held but had used only because he felt they would be rhetorically effective.<ref>{{cite book
| last = Auden
| first = W. H.
| title = Collected Shorter Poems, 1927–1957
| publisher = [[Faber and Faber]]
| location = London
| year = 1966
| page = 15
| isbn = 978-0-571-06878-4 }}</ref> His rejected poems include "[[Spain (Auden)|Spain]]" and "September 1, 1939". His [[literary executor]], [[Edward Mendelson]], argues in his introduction to ''Selected Poems'' that Auden's practice reflected his sense of the persuasive power of poetry and his reluctance to misuse it.<ref>{{cite book
| last = Auden
| first = W. H.
| editor-first = Edward
| editor-last = Mendelson
| editor-link = Edward Mendelson
| title = Selected Poems, new edition
| publisher = [[Vintage Books]]
| location = New York
| year = 1979
| pages = xix–xx
| isbn = 978-0-394-72506-2
| no-pp = true
| url = https://archive.org/details/selectedpoems00whau
}}</ref> (''Selected Poems'' includes some poems that Auden rejected and early texts of poems that he revised.)

===Early work, 1922–1939===
====Up to 1930====
[[File:Poems1928.jpg|upright|thumb|Cover of the privately printed ''[[Poems (Auden)|Poems]]'' (1928)]]
Auden began writing poems in 1922, at 15, mostly in the styles of 19th-century romantic poets, especially [[Wordsworth]], and later poets with rural interests, especially [[Thomas Hardy]]. At 18 he discovered [[T. S. Eliot|T.&nbsp;S. Eliot]] and adopted an extreme version of Eliot's style. He found his own voice at 20 when he wrote the first poem later included in his collected work, "From the very first coming down".<ref name="EarlyNoPage"/> This and other poems of the late 1920s tended to be in a clipped, elusive style that alluded to, but did not directly state, their themes of loneliness and loss. Twenty of these poems appeared in his first book ''[[Poems (Auden)|Poems]]'' (1928), a pamphlet hand-printed by [[Stephen Spender]].<ref>{{cite book
| last = Auden
| first = W. H.
| editor-first = Katherine
| editor-last = Bucknell
| title = Juvenilia: Poems, 1922–1928
| publisher = Princeton University Press
| location = Princeton
| year = 1994
| isbn = 978-0-691-03415-7
| url = https://archive.org/details/juveniliapoems1900aude
}}</ref>

In 1928 he 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. This mixture of tragedy and farce, with a dream play-within-a-play, introduced the mixed styles and content of much of his later work.<ref name="FullerNoPage"/> This drama and thirty short poems appeared in his first published book ''[[Poems (Auden)|Poems]]'' (1930, 2nd edition with seven poems replaced, 1933); the poems in the book were mostly lyrical and gnomic meditations on hoped-for or unconsummated love and on themes of personal, social, and seasonal renewal; among these poems were "It was Easter as I walked", "Doom is dark", "Sir, no man's enemy", and "This lunar beauty".<ref name="EarlyNoPage"/>

A recurrent theme in these early poems is the effect of "family ghosts", Auden's term for the powerful, unseen psychological effects of preceding generations on any individual life (and the title of a poem). A parallel theme, present throughout his work, is the contrast between biological evolution (unchosen and involuntary) and the psychological evolution of cultures and individuals (voluntary and deliberate even in its subconscious aspects).<ref name="FullerNoPage"/><ref name="EarlyNoPage"/>

====1931–1935====
[[File:DanceOfDeathProgramme.jpg|thumb|Programme of a Group Theatre production of ''[[The Dance of Death (Auden)|The Dance of Death]]'', with unsigned synopsis by Auden]]

Auden's next large-scale work was ''[[The Orators]]: An English Study'' (1932; revised editions, 1934, 1966), in verse and prose, largely about hero-worship in personal and political life. In his shorter poems, his style became more open and accessible, and the exuberant "Six Odes" in ''The Orators'' reflect his new interest in [[Robert Burns]].<ref name="FullerNoPage"/> During the next few years, many of his poems took their form and style from traditional ballads and popular songs, and also from expansive classical forms like the ''[[Odes (Horace)|Odes]]'' of [[Horace]], which he seems to have discovered through the German poet [[Hölderlin]].<ref name="EarlyNoPage"/> Around this time his main influences were [[Dante]], [[William Langland]], and [[Alexander Pope]].<ref>{{cite book
| last = Auden
| first = W. H.
| editor-first= Edward
| editor-last = Mendelson
| editor-link=Edward Mendelson
| title = Prose, Volume II: 1939–1948
| publisher = Princeton University Press
| location = Princeton
| year = 2002
| page = 92
| isbn = 978-0-691-08935-5}}</ref>

During these years much of his work expressed left-wing views, and he became widely known as a political poet although he was privately more ambivalent about revolutionary politics than many reviewers recognised,<ref>Carpenter (1981) pp. 256–257.</ref> and Mendelson argues that he expounded political views partly out of a sense of moral duty and partly because it enhanced his reputation, and that he later regretted having done so.<ref>[[Edward Mendelson|Mendelson]], ''Early Auden'', pp. 257–303.</ref> He generally wrote about revolutionary change in terms of a "change of heart", a transformation of a society from a closed-off psychology of fear to an open psychology of love.<ref name="RDH-NoPage"/>

His verse drama ''[[The Dance of Death (Auden)|The Dance of Death]]'' (1933) was a political extravaganza in the style of a theatrical revue, which Auden later called "a nihilistic leg-pull."<ref>{{cite book
| last1 = Auden
| first1 = W. H.
| first2 = Christopher
| last2 = Isherwood
| editor-first = Edward
| editor-last = Mendelson
| editor-link = Edward Mendelson
| title = Plays and other dramatic writings by W. H. Auden, 1928–1938
| publisher = Princeton University Press
| location = Princeton
| year = 1988
| pages = xxi
| isbn = 978-0-691-06740-7
| no-pp = true
| url = https://archive.org/details/playsotherdramat0000aude
}}</ref> His next play ''[[The Dog Beneath the Skin]]'' (1935), written in collaboration with Isherwood, was similarly a quasi-Marxist updating of [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] in which the general idea of social transformation was more prominent than any specific political action or structure.<ref name="FullerNoPage"/><ref name="EarlyNoPage"/>

''[[The Ascent of F6]]'' (1937), another play written with Isherwood, was partly an anti-imperialist satire, partly (in the character of the self-destroying climber Michael Ransom) an examination of Auden's own motives in taking on a public role as a political poet.<ref name="EarlyNoPage"/> This play included the first version of "[[Funeral Blues]]" ("Stop all the clocks"), written as a satiric eulogy for a politician; Auden later rewrote the poem as a "Cabaret Song" about lost love (written to be sung by the soprano [[Hedli Anderson]], for whom he wrote many lyrics in the 1930s).<ref name="Plays"/> In 1935, he 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, socially conscious art.<ref name="FullerNoPage"/><ref name="EarlyNoPage"/><ref name="Plays"/>

====1936–1939====
In 1936 Auden's publisher chose the title ''Look, Stranger!'' for a collection of political odes, love poems, comic songs, meditative lyrics, and a variety of intellectually intense but emotionally accessible verse; Auden hated the title and retitled the collection for the 1937 US edition ''[[On This Island]]''.<ref name="EarlyNoPage"/> Among the poems included in the book are "Hearing of harvests", "Out on the lawn I lie in bed", "O what is that sound", "Look, stranger, on this island now" (later revised versions change ''on'' to ''at''), and "Our hunting fathers".<ref name="FullerNoPage"/><ref name="EarlyNoPage"/>

Auden was now arguing that an artist should be a kind of journalist, and he put this view into practice in ''[[Letters from Iceland]]'' (1937) a travel book in prose and verse written with [[Louis MacNeice]], which included his long social, literary, and autobiographical commentary "Letter to Lord Byron".<ref name="ProseOne"/> In 1937, after observing the [[Spanish Civil War]] he wrote a politically engaged pamphlet poem ''[[Spain (Auden)|Spain]]'' (1937); he later discarded it from his collected works. ''[[Journey to a War]]'' (1939) a travel book in prose and verse, was written with Isherwood after their visit to the [[Second Sino-Japanese War|Sino-Japanese War]].<ref name="ProseOne"/> Auden's last collaboration with Isherwood was their third play, ''[[On the Frontier]]'', an anti-war satire written in Broadway and West End styles.<ref name="EarlyNoPage"/><ref name="DNB"/>

Auden's shorter poems now engaged with the fragility and transience of personal love ("Danse Macabre", "The Dream", "Lay your sleeping head"), a subject he treated with ironic wit in his "Four Cabaret Songs for Miss [[Hedli Anderson]]" (which included "Tell Me the Truth About Love" and the revised version of "[[Funeral Blues]]"), and also the corrupting effect of public and official culture on individual lives ("Casino", "School Children", "Dover").<ref name="FullerNoPage"/><ref name="EarlyNoPage"/> In 1938, he wrote a series of dark, ironic ballads about individual failure ("Miss Gee", "James Honeyman", "Victor"). All these appeared in ''[[Another Time (book)|Another Time]]'' (1940), together with poems including "Dover", "As He Is", and "[[Musée des Beaux Arts (poem)|Musée des Beaux Arts]]" (all of which were written before he moved to America in 1939), and "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", "[[The Unknown Citizen]]", "Law Like Love", "September 1, 1939", and "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" (all written in America).<ref name="FullerNoPage"/>

The elegies for Yeats and Freud are partly anti-heroic statements, in which great deeds are performed, not by unique geniuses whom others cannot hope to imitate, but by otherwise ordinary individuals who were "silly like us" (Yeats) or of whom it could be said "he wasn't clever at all" (Freud), and who became teachers of others, not awe-inspiring heroes.<ref name="EarlyNoPage"/>

===Middle period, 1940–1957===
====1940–1946====
In 1940 Auden wrote a long philosophical poem "New Year Letter", which appeared with miscellaneous notes and other poems in ''[[The Double Man (book)|The Double Man]]'' (1941). At the time of his return to the Anglican Communion he began writing abstract verse on theological themes, such as "Canzone" and "Kairos and Logos". Around 1942, as he became more comfortable with religious themes, his verse became more open and relaxed, and he increasingly used the [[syllabic verse]] he had learned from the poetry of [[Marianne Moore]].<ref name="LaterNoPage"/>

Auden's work in this era addresses the artist's temptation to use other persons as material for his art rather than valuing them for themselves ("Prospero to Ariel") and the corresponding moral obligation to make and keep commitments while recognising the temptation to break them ("In Sickness and Health").<ref name="LaterNoPage"/><ref name="FullerNoPage"/> From 1942 through 1947 he worked mostly on three long poems in dramatic form, each differing from the others in form and content: "[[For the Time Being]]: A Christmas Oratorio", "[[The Sea and the Mirror|The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare's ''The Tempest'']]{{-"}} (both published in ''For the Time Being'', 1944), and ''[[The Age of Anxiety]]: A Baroque Eclogue'' (published separately in 1947).<ref name="LaterNoPage"/> The first two, with Auden's other new poems from 1940 to 1944, were included in his first collected edition, ''The Collected Poetry of W.&nbsp;H. Auden'' (1945), with most of his earlier poems, many in revised versions.<ref name="FullerNoPage"/>

====1947–1957====
[[File:W. H. Auden (1956 press photo).jpg|thumb|upright|Auden in 1956]]

After completing ''The Age of Anxiety'' in 1946 he focused again on shorter poems, notably "A Walk After Dark", "The Love Feast", and "The Fall of Rome".<ref name="LaterNoPage"/> Many of these evoked the Italian village where he spent his summers between 1948 and 1957, and his next book, ''[[Nones (Auden)|Nones]]'' (1951), had a Mediterranean atmosphere new to his work.<ref name="Tony Sharpe 196">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=U1QgAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA196|page=196|title=W. H. Auden in Context|first=Tony |last=Sharpe|publisher=Cambridge University Press|date= 21 January 2013 |isbn=9781139618922}}</ref> A new theme was the "sacred importance" of the human body<ref>{{cite book
 | last = Auden
 | first = W. H.
 | title = Forewords and Afterwords
 | publisher = Random House
 | year = 1973
 | location = New York
 | page = 68
 | isbn = 978-0-394-48359-7}}</ref> in its ordinary aspect (breathing, sleeping, eating) and the continuity with nature that the body made possible (in contrast to the division between humanity and nature that he had emphasised in the 1930s);<ref name="Tony Sharpe 196"/> his poems on these themes included "[[In Praise of Limestone]]" (1948) and "Memorial for the City" (1949).<ref name="FullerNoPage"/><ref name="LaterNoPage"/> In 1947–1948, Auden and Kallman wrote the libretto for [[Igor Stravinsky]]'s opera ''[[The Rake's Progress]]'', and later collaborated on two libretti for operas by [[Hans Werner Henze]].<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/><ref name="Libretti"/>

Auden's first separate prose book was ''[[The Enchafèd Flood]]: The Romantic Iconography of the Sea'' (1950), based on a series of lectures on the image of the sea in romantic literature.<ref name="ProseTwo">{{cite book
| last = Auden
| first = W. H.
| editor-first =Edward
| editor-last = Mendelson
| editor-link=Edward Mendelson
| title = Prose, Volume II: 1939–1948
| publisher = Princeton University Press
| location = Princeton
| year = 2002
| isbn = 978-0-691-08935-5}}</ref> Between 1949 and 1954 he worked on a sequence of seven [[Good Friday]] poems, titled "[[Horae Canonicae]]", an encyclopaedic survey of geological, biological, cultural, and personal history, focused on the irreversible act of murder; the poem was also a study in cyclical and linear ideas of time. While writing this, he also wrote "[[Bucolics (Auden)|Bucolics]]", a sequence of seven poems about man's relation to nature. Both sequences appeared in his next book, ''[[The Shield of Achilles]]'' (1955), with other short poems, including the book's title poem, "Fleet Visit", and "Epitaph for the Unknown Soldier".<ref name="FullerNoPage"/><ref name="LaterNoPage"/>

In 1955–56 Auden wrote a group of poems about "history", the term he used to mean the set of unique events made by human choices, as opposed to "nature", the set of involuntary events created by natural processes, statistics, and anonymous forces such as crowds. These poems included "T the Great", "The Maker", and the title poem of his next collection ''[[Homage to Clio]]'' (1960).<ref name="FullerNoPage"/><ref name="LaterNoPage"/>

===Later work, 1958–1973===
[[File:Auden1970ByPeter.jpg|thumb|upright|Auden in 1970]]
In the late 1950s Auden's style became less rhetorical while its range of styles increased. In 1958, having moved his summer home from Italy to Austria, he wrote "Good-bye to the Mezzogiorno"; other poems from this period include "{{Lang|de|Dichtung und Wahrheit|italic=no}}: An Unwritten Poem", a prose poem about the relation between love and personal and poetic language, and the contrasting "Dame Kind", about the anonymous impersonal reproductive instinct. These and other poems, including his 1955–66 poems about history, appeared in ''[[Homage to Clio]]'' (1960).<ref name="FullerNoPage"/><ref name="LaterNoPage"/> His prose book ''[[The Dyer's Hand]]'' (1962) gathered many of the lectures he gave in Oxford as Professor of Poetry in 1956–61, together with revised versions of essays and notes written since the mid-1940s.<ref name="LaterNoPage"/>

Among the new styles and forms in Auden's later work were the [[haiku]] and [[tanka]] that he began writing after translating the haiku and other verse in [[Dag Hammarskjöld]]'s ''Markings''.<ref name="LaterNoPage"/> A sequence of fifteen poems about his house in Austria, "Thanksgiving for a Habitat" (written in various styles that included an imitation of [[William Carlos Williams]]) appeared in ''[[About the House]]'' (1965), together with other poems that included his reflection on his lecture tours, "On the Circuit".<ref name="FullerNoPage"/> In the late 1960s he wrote some of his most vigorous poems, including "River Profile" and two poems that looked back over his life, "Prologue at Sixty" and "Forty Years On". All these appeared in ''[[City Without Walls]]'' (1969). His lifelong passion for Icelandic legend culminated in his verse translation of ''The [[Elder Edda]]'' (1969).<ref name="FullerNoPage"/><ref name="LaterNoPage"/> Among his later themes was the "religionless Christianity" he learned partly from [[Dietrich Bonhoeffer]], the dedicatee of his poem "Friday's Child".<ref>{{cite book
| last = Kirsch
| first = Arthur
| title = Auden and Christianity
| publisher = Yale University Press
| location = New Haven
| year = 2005
| isbn = 978-0-300-10814-9
}}</ref>

<!-- He was commissioned in 1963 to write lyrics for the Broadway musical ''[[Man of La Mancha]]'', but the producer rejected them as insufficiently romantic.<ref name="Libretti"/> In 1971, Secretary-General of the United Nations [[U Thant]] commissioned Auden to write the words, and [[Pablo Casals]] to compose the music, for a "Hymn to the United Nations", but the work had no official status.<ref>{{ cite web
 | title = United Nations – Fact Sheet # 9: "Does the UN have a hymn or national anthem?
 | url = http://www.un.org/geninfo/faq/factsheets/hymn.pdf
 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090325001921/http://www.un.org/geninfo/faq/factsheets/hymn.pdf
 | archive-date = 25 March 2009
| access-date = 26 May 2013 }}</ref>
-->
''[[A Certain World]]: A Commonplace Book'' (1970) was a kind of self-portrait made up of favourite quotations with commentary, arranged in alphabetical order by subject.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HCQkCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA50|page=50|title=W.H. Auden Encyclopedia|author=David Garrett Izzo|publisher=McFarland|date= 28 February 2004|isbn=9780786479993}}</ref> His last prose book was a selection of essays and reviews, ''Forewords and Afterwords'' (1973).<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/> His last books of verse, ''[[Epistle to a Godson]]'' (1972) and the unfinished ''[[Thank You, Fog]]'' (published posthumously, 1974) include reflective poems about language ("Natural Linguistics", "Aubade"), philosophy and science ("No, Plato, No", "Unpredictable but Providential"), and his own aging ("A New Year Greeting", "Talking to Myself"—which he dedicated to his friend [[Oliver Sacks]],<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/swimming-with-oliver-sacks |title=Swimming With Oliver Sacks |magazine=The New Yorker |access-date=January 5, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://tribrach.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/the-poem-that-w-h-auden-dedicated-to-oliver-sacks/ |title=The poem that W.H. Auden dedicated to Oliver Sacks |website=Tribrach |date=9 January 2016 |access-date=January 9, 2016}}</ref> "A Lullaby" ["The din of work is subdued"]). His last completed poem was "Archaeology", about ritual and timelessness, two recurring themes in his later years.<ref name="LaterNoPage"/>

===Reputation and influence===
Auden's stature in modern literature has been contested. Probably the most common critical view from the 1930s onward ranked him as the last and least of the three major twentieth-century poets of the UK or Ireland—behind Yeats and Eliot—while a minority view, more prominent in recent years, ranks him as the highest of the three.<ref name="SmithIntro">{{cite book | last = Smith | first = Stan | year = 2004 | chapter = Introduction | title = The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden | editor = Stan Smith | publisher = Cambridge University Press | location = Cambridge | pages = 1–14 | isbn = 978-0-521-82962-5}}</ref> Opinions have ranged from those of [[Hugh MacDiarmid]], who called him "a complete wash-out"; [[F. R. Leavis]], who wrote that Auden's ironic style was "self-defensive, self-indulgent or merely irresponsible";<ref>Haffenden, p. 222.</ref> and [[Harold Bloom]], who wrote "Close thy Auden, open thy [[Wallace Stevens|[Wallace] Stevens]],"<ref>{{cite magazine
| last = Bloom | first = Harold | date = 5 April 1969 | title = Christianity and Art | magazine = The New Republic | volume = 160 | issue = 14 | pages = 25–28}}</ref> to the obituarist in ''[[The Times]]'', who wrote: "W.H. Auden, for long the ''enfant terrible'' of English poetry... emerges as its undisputed master."<ref name = "SansomChapter">{{cite book | last = Sansom | first = Ian | year = 2004 | chapter = Auden and Influence | title = The Cambridge Companion to W.H. Auden | editor-first = Stan | editor-last = Smith | publisher = Cambridge University Press | location = Cambridge | pages = 226–39 | isbn = 978-0-521-82962-5}}</ref> [[Joseph Brodsky]] wrote that Auden had "the greatest mind of the twentieth century".<ref name="Brodsky" />

Critical estimates were divided from the start. Reviewing Auden's first book, ''Poems'' (1930), [[Naomi Mitchison]] wrote "If this is really only the beginning, we have perhaps a master to look forward to."<ref>Haffenden, p. 83.</ref> But [[John Hanbury Angus Sparrow|John Sparrow]], recalling Mitchison's comment in 1934, dismissed Auden's early work as "a monument to the misguided aims that prevail among contemporary poets, and the fact that... he is being hailed as 'a master' shows how criticism is helping poetry on the downward path."<ref>Haffenden, pp. 7–8.</ref>

Auden's clipped, satiric, and ironic style in the 1930s was widely imitated by younger poets such as [[Charles Madge]], who wrote in a poem "there waited for me in the summer morning / Auden fiercely. I read, shuddered, and knew."<ref>Smith, ''Companion'', p. 123.</ref> He was widely described as the leader of an "Auden group" that comprised his friends [[Stephen Spender]], [[Cecil Day-Lewis]], and [[Louis MacNeice]].<ref name="Hynes">{{cite book | last = Hynes | first = Samuel | year = 1977 | title = The Auden Generation | publisher = Viking | location = New York | isbn = 978-0-712-65250-6 | url = https://archive.org/details/audengenerationl00hyne }}</ref> The four were mocked by the poet [[Roy Campbell (poet)|Roy Campbell]] as if they were a single undifferentiated poet named "Macspaunday."<ref>Haffenden, p. 34.</ref> Auden's propagandistic poetic plays, including ''The Dog Beneath the Skin'' and ''The Ascent of F6'', and his political poems such as "Spain" gave him the reputation as a political poet writing in a progressive and accessible voice, in contrast to Eliot; but this political stance provoked opposing opinions, such as that of [[Austin Clarke (poet)|Austin Clarke]] who called Auden's work "liberal, democratic, and humane",<ref>Haffenden, p. 29.</ref> and John Drummond, who wrote that Auden misused a "characteristic and popularizing trick, the generalized image", to present ostensibly left-wing views that were in fact "confined to bourgeois experience."<ref>Haffenden, p. 31.</ref>

Auden's departure for America in 1939 was debated in Britain (once even in Parliament), with some seeing his emigration as a betrayal. Defenders of Auden such as [[Geoffrey Grigson]], in an introduction to a 1949 anthology of modern poetry, wrote that Auden "arches over all". His stature was suggested by book titles such as ''Auden and After'' by [[Francis Scarfe]] (1942) and ''The Auden Generation'' by [[Samuel Hynes]] (1977).<ref name="Companion"/>

[[File:Plaque to W.H. Auden, Brooklyn Heights 01 (9420506021).jpg|thumb|Commemorative plaque at one of Auden's homes in [[Brooklyn Heights]], New York]]
In the US, starting in the late 1930s, the detached, ironic tone of Auden's regular stanzas became influential; [[John Ashbery]] recalled that in the 1940s Auden "was ''the'' modern poet".<ref name="SansomChapter"/> Auden's formal influences were so pervasive in American poetry that the ecstatic style of the [[Beat Generation]] was partly a reaction against his influence. From the 1940s through the 1960s, many critics lamented that Auden's work had declined from its earlier promise; [[Randall Jarrell]] wrote a series of essays making a case against Auden's later work,<ref>{{cite book | last = Jarrell | first = Randall | editor-last = Burt | editor-first = Stephen | year = 2005 | title = Randall Jarrell on W. H. Auden | publisher = Columbia University Press | location = New York | isbn = 978-0-231-13078-3 | url = https://archive.org/details/randalljarrellon00jarr }}</ref> and [[Philip Larkin]]'s "What's Become of Wystan?" (1960) had a wide impact.<ref name="SansomChapter" /><ref>Haffenden, pp. 414–19.</ref>

The first full-length study of Auden was [[Richard Hoggart]]'s ''Auden: An Introductory Essay'' (1951), which concluded that "Auden's work, then, is a civilising force."<ref>{{cite book | last = Hoggart | first = Richard | year = 1951 | title = Auden: An Introductory Essay | url = https://archive.org/details/audenintroductor0000hogg | url-access = registration | publisher = Chatto & Windus | location = London | page = [https://archive.org/details/audenintroductor0000hogg/page/219 219]}}</ref> It was followed by [[Joseph Warren Beach]]'s ''The Making of the Auden Canon'' (1957), a disapproving account of Auden's revisions of his earlier work.<ref>{{cite book | last = Beach | first = Joseph Warren | year = 1957 | title = The Making of the Auden Canon | url = https://archive.org/details/makingofaudenc00jose | url-access = registration | publisher = University of Minnesota Press | location = Minneapolis}}</ref> The first systematic critical account was Monroe K. Spears' ''The Poetry of W.&nbsp;H. Auden: The Disenchanted Island'' (1963), "written out of the conviction that Auden's poetry can offer the reader entertainment, instruction, intellectual excitement, and a prodigal variety of aesthetic pleasures, all in a generous abundance that is unique in our time."<ref>{{cite book | last = Spears | first = Monroe K. | year = 1963 | title = The Poetry of W.H. Auden: The Disenchanted Island | publisher = Oxford University Press | location = New York | page = v}}</ref>

Auden was one of three candidates recommended by the Nobel Committee to the Swedish Academy for the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]] in 1963<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/literature/1963.html | title=Candidates for the 1963 Nobel Prize in Literature | publisher=Nobel Prize |year=2013 | access-date=3 January 2014 | archive-date=12 December 2017 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171212193319/https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/literature/1963.html | url-status=live }}</ref> and 1965<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/literature/1965.html | title=Candidates for the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature | publisher=Nobel Prize |year=2014 | access-date=4 December 2016 | archive-date=14 August 2018 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180814201240/https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/literature/1965.html | url-status=live }}</ref> and six recommended for the 1964 prize.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/literature/1964.html |title=Candidates for the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature |publisher=Nobel Prize |year=2015 |access-date=25 May 2015 |archive-date=12 May 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150512204159/http://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/literature/1964.html |url-status=live }}</ref> By the time of his death in 1973 he 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.<ref>{{cite web |title = Famous People & the Abbey: Wystan Hugh Auden |url = https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/wystan-hugh-auden/#i13475 |access-date = 28 July 2018 |df = dmy-all |archive-date = 29 July 2018 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180729013005/https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/wystan-hugh-auden/#i13475 |url-status = live }}</ref> The ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'' writes that "by the time of Eliot's death in 1965... a convincing case could be made for the assertion that Auden was indeed Eliot's successor, as Eliot had inherited sole claim to supremacy when [[Yeats]] died in 1939."<ref>{{cite web| website=Encyclopædia Britannica| title=W.H. Auden| url=http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9011216/W-H-Auden| access-date=23 February 2008| archive-date=7 March 2008| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080307041305/http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9011216/W-H-Auden| url-status=live}}</ref> With some exceptions, British critics tended to treat his early work as his best, while American critics tended to favour his middle and later work.<ref>Haffenden, p. 54.</ref><ref>Aidan Wasley, "Auden and the American Literary World", in Sharpe, ''W.H. Auden in Context'', pp. 118–37.</ref>

Another group of critics and poets has maintained that unlike other modern poets, Auden's reputation did not decline after his death, and the influence of his later writing was especially strong on younger American poets including [[John Ashbery]], [[James Merrill]], [[Anthony Hecht]], and [[Maxine Kumin]].<ref>{{cite book | last = Wasley | first = Aidan | title = The Age of Auden: Postwar Poetry and the American Scene | year = 2011 | publisher = Princeton University Press | location = Princeton | isbn = 978-1-40083635-2}}</ref> Typical later evaluations describe him as "arguably the [20th] century's greatest poet" (Peter Parker and Frank Kermode),<ref>{{cite book | editor-last = Kermode | editor-first = Frank | title = The Reader's Companion to Twentieth-Century Writers | year = 1995 | publisher = Fourth Estate | location = London | page = 35 | isbn = 978-1-85702332-9}}</ref> who "now clearly seems the greatest poet in English since Tennyson" (Philip Hensher).<ref>{{cite news | url = https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2009/nov/07/britten-auden-philip-hensher | title = Love's a little boy | last = Hensher | first = Philip | date = 6 November 2009 | newspaper = The Guardian | access-date = 30 September 2015 | archive-date = 1 October 2015 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151001211437/http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2009/nov/07/britten-auden-philip-hensher | url-status = live }}</ref>

Auden became a close friend of neurologist [[Oliver Sacks]] and after publication of Sacks's first book ''[[Migraine (book)|Migraine]]'', in 1970, his review encouraged Sacks to adapt his writing style to "be metaphorical, be mythical, be whatever you need."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Wallace-Wells |first1=David |title=A Brain With a Heart |url=https://nymag.com/news/features/oliver-sacks-2012-11/ |work=New York |date=3 November 2012 |access-date=6 December 2024 |archive-date=6 September 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150906001253/http://nymag.com/news/features/oliver-sacks-2012-11/ |url-status=live}}</ref>

Public recognition of Auden's work sharply increased after his "Funeral Blues" ("Stop all the clocks") was read aloud in the film ''[[Four Weddings and a Funeral]]'' (1994); subsequently, a pamphlet edition of ten of his poems, ''Tell Me the Truth About Love'', sold more than 275,000 copies. An excerpt from his poem "As I walked out one evening" was recited in the film ''[[Before Sunrise]]'' (1995).<ref>{{cite magazine | url = https://ew.com/article/1995/02/03/wh-audens-hollywood-career/ | title = W.H. Auden's Hollywood career | magazine = [[Entertainment Weekly]] | access-date = 1 March 2021 | archive-date = 18 September 2021 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210918115626/https://ew.com/article/1995/02/03/wh-audens-hollywood-career/ | url-status = live }}</ref> After the [[September 11 attacks|11 September 2001 attacks]], his 1939 poem "September 1, 1939" was widely circulated and frequently broadcast.<ref name="SansomChapter"/> Public readings and broadcast tributes in the UK and US in 2007 marked his centenary year.<ref>{{cite web | author = The W. H. Auden Society | url = http://audensociety.org/news.html | title = The Auden Centenary 2007 | access-date = 20 January 2007 | archive-date = 2 February 2007 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070202071443/http://audensociety.org/news.html | url-status = live }}</ref>

Overall Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form and content.<ref name = "EarlyNoPage"/><ref name="FullerNoPage"/><ref name="Brodsky">{{cite book | last = Brodksy | first = Joseph | year = 1986 | title = Less Than One: selected essays | publisher = Farrar, Straus & Giroux | location = New York | page = 357 | isbn = 978-0-374-18503-9}}</ref><ref name="PoetsOrg">{{cite web | url = http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/120 | publisher = [[Academy of American Poets]] | title = W.H. Auden | access-date = 21 January 2007 | archive-date = 27 March 2014 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140327173545/http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/120 | url-status = live }}</ref>

Memorial stones and plaques commemorating Auden include those in Westminster Abbey; at his birthplace at 55 Bootham, York;<ref>{{cite web | url = http://openplaques.org/plaques/9970 | title = Open plaques | access-date = 22 April 2017 | archive-date = 13 July 2017 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170713040541/http://openplaques.org/plaques/9970 | url-status = live }}</ref> near his home on Lordswood Road, Birmingham;<ref>{{cite web | url = http://openplaques.org/plaques/1538 | title = Open plaques | access-date = 22 April 2017 | archive-date = 13 July 2017 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170713043918/http://openplaques.org/plaques/1538 | url-status = live }}</ref> in the chapel of Christ Church, Oxford; on the site of his apartment at 1 Montague Terrace, Brooklyn Heights; at his apartment in 77 St. Marks Place, New York (damaged and now removed);<ref>{{cite web | url = http://sideways.nyc/2012/08/w-h-auden/ | title = Manhattan Sideways | access-date = 22 April 2017 | archive-date = 23 April 2017 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170423152308/http://sideways.nyc/2012/08/w-h-auden/ | url-status = live }}</ref> at the site of his death at Walfischgasse 5 in Vienna;<ref>{{cite web | url = http://alfredcornsweblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/audens-last-night-vienna-museums.html | title = Auden's last night. Vienna museums | access-date = 22 April 2017 | date = 14 June 2008 | archive-date = 2 August 2017 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170802133749/http://alfredcornsweblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/audens-last-night-vienna-museums.html | url-status = live }}</ref> and in the [[Rainbow Honor Walk]] in San Francisco.<ref name=autogenerated5>{{Cite web|url=https://www.kqed.org/news/11765805/tributes-in-bronze-8-more-lgbt-heroes-join-s-f-s-rainbow-honor-walk|title=Tributes in Bronze: 8 More LGBT Heroes Join S.F.'s Rainbow Honor Walk|last=Yollin|first=Patricia|date=6 August 2019|website=KQED: The California Report|language=en|access-date=16 August 2019|archive-date=14 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190814132643/https://www.kqed.org/news/11765805/tributes-in-bronze-8-more-lgbt-heroes-join-s-f-s-rainbow-honor-walk|url-status=live}}</ref> In his house in Kirchstetten, his study is open to the public upon request.<ref>["Sommer in Kirchstetten – Gedenkstätte für W.H. Auden], ''NÖN'' 39/2015.</ref>

In 2023, 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]]. He was rejected due to having taken American citizenship.<ref name="BBC2023">{{Cite news|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-66224984|work=[[BBC News]]|title=No 10 turned down Larkin, Auden and other poets for laureate job|date=19 July 2023|first=Sanchia|last=Berg}}</ref>

==Published works==
The following list includes only the books of poems and essays that Auden prepared during his lifetime; for a more complete list, including other works and posthumous editions, see [[W. H. Auden bibliography]]. Dates refer to first publication or first performance, not of composition.

In the list below, works reprinted in the ''Complete Works of W.&nbsp;H. Auden'' are indicated by footnote references.

; Books
* ''[[Poems (Auden)|Poems]]'' (London, 1930; second edn., seven poems substituted, London, 1933; includes poems and ''[[Paid on Both Sides]]: A Charade''<ref name="Plays">{{cite book
| last1 = Auden
| first1 = W. H.
| first2 = Christopher
| last2 = Isherwood
| editor-first = Edward
| editor-link = Edward Mendelson
| editor-last = Mendelson
| title = Plays and other dramatic writings by W. H. Auden, 1928–1938
| publisher = Princeton University Press
| location = Princeton
| year = 1988
| isbn = 978-0-691-06740-7
| url = https://archive.org/details/playsotherdramat0000aude
}}</ref>) (dedicated to [[Christopher Isherwood]]).
* ''[[The Orators]]: An English Study'' (London, 1932, verse and prose; slightly revised edn., London, 1934; revised edn. with new preface, London, 1966; New York 1967) (dedicated to [[Stephen Spender]]).
* ''[[The Dance of Death (Auden)|The Dance of Death]]'' (London, 1933, play)<ref name="Plays"/> (dedicated to [[Robert Medley]] and [[Rupert Doone]]).
* ''[[Poems (Auden)|Poems]]'' (New York, 1934; contains ''Poems'' [1933 edition], ''The Orators'' [1932 edition], and ''The Dance of Death'').
* ''[[The Dog Beneath the Skin]]'' (London, New York, 1935; play, with Christopher Isherwood)<ref name="Plays"/> (dedicated to Robert Moody).
* ''[[The Ascent of F6]]'' (London, 1936; 2nd edn., 1937; New York, 1937; play, with Christopher Isherwood)<ref name="Plays"/> (dedicated to [[John Bicknell Auden]]).
* ''[[Look, Stranger!]]'' (London, 1936, poems; US edn., ''[[On This Island]]'', New York, 1937) (dedicated to [[Erika Mann]])
* ''[[Letters from Iceland]]'' (London, New York, 1937; verse and prose, with [[Louis MacNeice]])<ref name="ProseOne">{{cite book
| last = Auden
| first = W. H.
| editor-first = Edward
| editor-last = Mendelson
| editor-link=Edward Mendelson
| title = Prose and travel books in prose and verse, Volume I: 1926–1938
| publisher = Princeton University Press
| location = Princeton
| year = 1996
| isbn = 978-0-691-06803-9}}</ref> (dedicated to [[George Augustus Auden]]).
* ''[[On the Frontier]]'' (London, 1938; New York 1939; play, with Christopher Isherwood)<ref name="Plays"/> (dedicated to [[Benjamin Britten]]).
* ''[[Journey to a War]]'' (London, New York, 1939; verse and prose, with Christopher Isherwood)<ref name="ProseOne"/> (dedicated to [[E. M. Forster]]).
* ''[[Another Time (book)|Another Time]]'' (London, New York 1940; poetry) (dedicated to [[Chester Kallman]]).
* ''[[The Double Man (book)|The Double Man]]'' (New York, 1941, poems; UK edn., ''New Year Letter'', London, 1941) (Dedicated to [[Elizabeth Mayer]]).
* ''[[For the Time Being]]'' (New York, 1944; London, 1945; two long poems: "[[The Sea and the Mirror]]: A Commentary on Shakespeare's ''The Tempest''", dedicated to [[James Stern (writer)|James and Tania Stern]], and "[[For the Time Being]]: A Christmas Oratorio", in memoriam Constance Rosalie Auden [Auden's mother]).
* ''The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden'' (New York, 1945; includes new poems) (dedicated to Christopher Isherwood and [[Chester Kallman]]). Full text.<ref name="CollectedPoetry">{{cite book
|last=Auden
|first=W. H.
|title=The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden
|date=1945
|publisher=Random House
|location=New York
|oclc=362531
|access-date=28 May 2017
|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.215337}}</ref>
* ''[[The Age of Anxiety]]: A Baroque Eclogue'' (New York, 1947; London, 1948; verse; won the 1948 [[Pulitzer Prize for Poetry]]) (dedicated to [[John Betjeman]]).
* ''Collected Shorter Poems, 1930–1944'' (London, 1950; similar to 1945 ''Collected Poetry'') (dedicated to Christopher Isherwood and [[Chester Kallman]]).
* ''[[The Enchafèd Flood]]'' (New York, 1950; London, 1951; prose) (dedicated to [[Alan Ansen]]).<ref name="ProseThree">{{cite book
| last = Auden
| first = W. H.
| editor-first = Edward
| editor-last = Mendelson
| editor-link = Edward Mendelson
| title = Prose, Volume III: 1949–1955
| publisher = Princeton University Press
| location = Princeton
| year = 2008
| isbn = 978-0-691-13326-3
| url-access = registration
| url = https://archive.org/details/trent_0116405823828
}}</ref>
* ''[[Nones (Auden)|Nones]]'' (New York, 1951; London, 1952; poems) (dedicated to [[Reinhold Niebuhr|Reinhold]] and [[Ursula Niebuhr]])
* ''[[The Shield of Achilles]]'' (New York, London, 1955; poems) (won the 1956 [[National Book Award for Poetry]])<ref name=nba1956>[https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1956 "National Book Awards – 1956"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190422162148/https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1956/ |date=22 April 2019 }}. National Book Foundation. Retrieved 27 February 2012.
<br />(With acceptance speech by Auden and essay by Megan Snyder-Camp from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)</ref> (dedicated to [[Lincoln Kirstein|Lincoln and Fidelma Kirstein]]).
* ''[[Homage to Clio]]'' (New York, London, 1960; poems) (dedicated to [[E. R. Dodds|E. R. and A. E. Dodds]]).
* ''[[The Dyer's Hand]]'' (New York, 1962; London, 1963; essays) (dedicated to [[Nevill Coghill]]).<ref name="ProseFour">{{cite book
| last = Auden
| first = W. H.
| editor-first = Edward
| editor-last = Mendelson
| editor-link=Edward Mendelson
| title = Prose, Volume IV: 1956–1962
| publisher = Princeton University Press
| location = Princeton
| year = 2010
| isbn = 978-0-691-14755-0}}</ref>
* ''[[About the House]]'' (New York, London, 1965; poems) (dedicated to [[Edmund Wilson|Edmund and Elena Wilson]]).
* ''Collected Shorter Poems 1927–1957'' (London, 1966; New York, 1967) (dedicated to Christopher Isherwood and [[Chester Kallman]]).
* ''Collected Longer Poems'' (London, 1968; New York, 1969).
* ''[[Secondary Worlds]]'' (London, New York, 1969; prose) (dedicated to [[Valerie Eliot]]).<ref name="ProseFive">{{cite book
| last = Auden
| first = W. H.
| editor-first = Edward
| editor-last = Mendelson
| editor-link=Edward Mendelson
| title = Prose, Volume V: 1963–1968
| publisher = Princeton University Press
| location = Princeton
| year = 2015
| isbn = 978-0-691-151717}}</ref>
* ''[[City Without Walls]] and Other Poems'' (London, New York, 1969) (dedicated to [[Peter Heyworth]]).
* ''[[A Certain World]]: A Commonplace Book'' (New York, London, 1970; quotations with commentary) (dedicated to [[Geoffrey Grigson]]).<ref name="ProseSix">{{cite book
| last = Auden
| first = W. H.
| editor-first = Edward
| editor-last = Mendelson
| editor-link=Edward Mendelson
| title = Prose, Volume VI: 1969–1973
| publisher = Princeton University Press
| location = Princeton
| year = 2015
| isbn = 978-0-691-164588}}</ref>
* ''[[Academic Graffiti]]'' (London, New York, 1971; poems) (in memoriam [[Ogden Nash]]).
* ''[[Epistle to a Godson]] and Other Poems'' (London, New York, 1972) (dedicated to Orlan Fox).
* ''[[Forewords and Afterwords]]'' (New York, London, 1973; essays) (dedicated to [[Hannah Arendt]]).
* ''[[Thank You, Fog]]: Last Poems'' (London, New York, 1974) (dedicated to [[Michael Yates (television designer)|Michael and Marny Yates]]).

; Film scripts and opera libretti
* ''Coal Face'' (1935, closing chorus for [[GPO Film Unit]] documentary).<ref name="Plays"/>
* ''[[Night Mail]]'' (1936, narrative for [[GPO Film Unit]] documentary, not published separately except as a programme note).<ref name="Plays"/>
* ''[[Paul Bunyan (operetta)|Paul Bunyan]]'' (1941, libretto for operetta by [[Benjamin Britten]]; not published until 1976).<ref name="Libretti">{{cite book
| last1 = Auden
| first1 = W. H.
| first2 = Chester
| last2 = Kallman
| editor-first = Edward
| editor-last = Mendelson
| editor-link = Edward Mendelson
| title = Libretti and other dramatic writings by W. H. Auden, 1939–1973
| publisher = Princeton University Press
| location = Princeton
| year = 1993
| isbn = 978-0-691-03301-3
| url = https://archive.org/details/librettiotherdra00aude
}}</ref>
* ''[[The Rake's Progress]]'' (1951, with [[Chester Kallman]], libretto for an opera by [[Igor Stravinsky]]).<ref name="Libretti"/>
* ''[[Elegy for Young Lovers]]'' (1961, with [[Chester Kallman]], libretto for an opera by [[Hans Werner Henze]]).<ref name="Libretti"/>
* ''[[The Bassarids]]'' (1966, with [[Chester Kallman]], libretto for an opera by [[Hans Werner Henze]] based on ''[[The Bacchae]]'' of [[Euripides]]).<ref name="Libretti"/>
* ''Runner'' (1962, documentary film narrative for [[National Film Board of Canada]])<ref name="Libretti"/>
* ''[[Love's Labour's Lost (opera)|Love's Labour's Lost]]'' (1973, with [[Chester Kallman]], libretto for an opera by [[Nicolas Nabokov]], based on [[Love's Labour's Lost|Shakespeare's play]]).<ref name="Libretti"/>

; Musical collaborations
* ''[[Our Hunting Fathers]]'' (1936, song cycle written for [[Benjamin Britten]])
* ''[[Hymn to St Cecilia]]'' (1942, choral piece composed by [[Benjamin Britten]])
* ''An Evening of Elizabethan Verse and its Music'' (1954 recording with the [[New York Pro Musica Antiqua]], director [[Noah Greenberg]]; Auden spoke the verse texts)
* ''[[The Play of Daniel]]'' (1958, verse narration for a production by the New York Pro Musica Antiqua, director Noah Greenberg)<ref name="Libretti"/>

==References==
=== Citations ===
{{reflist|30em}}

=== General and cited sources ===
* Auden, W. H.; ed. by [[Katherine Bucknell]] and Nicholas Jenkins (1990) ''"The Map of All My Youth": early works, friends and influences'' (Auden Studies 1). Oxford: Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|0-19-812964-5}}.
* Auden, W. H.; ed. by Katherine Bucknell and Nicholas Jenkins (1994). ''"The Language of Learning and the Language of Love": uncollected writings, new interpretations'' (Auden Studies 2). Oxford: Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|0-19-812257-8}}.
* Auden, W. H.; ed. by Katherine Bucknell and Nicholas Jenkins (1995). ''"In Solitude, For Company": W. H. Auden after 1940: unpublished prose and recent criticism'' (Auden Studies 3). Oxford: Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|0-19-818294-5}}.
* [[Carpenter, Humphrey]] (1981). ''W. H. Auden: A Biography''. London: [[George Allen & Unwin]]. {{ISBN|0-04-928044-9}}.
* Clark, Thekla (1995). ''Wystan and Chester: A Personal Memoir of W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman''. London: Faber and Faber. {{ISBN|0-571-17591-0}}.
* [[Davenport-Hines, Richard]] (1996). ''Auden''. London: [[Heinemann (publisher)|Heinemann]]. {{ISBN|0-434-17507-2}}.
* Farnan, Dorothy J. (1984). ''Auden in Love''. New York: Simon & Schuster. {{ISBN|0-671-50418-5}}.
* [[John Fuller (poet)|Fuller, John]] (1998). ''W. H. Auden: A Commentary''. London: [[Faber and Faber]]. {{ISBN|0-571-19268-8}}.
* [[Haffenden, John]], ed. (1983). ''W. H. Auden: The Critical Heritage''. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. {{ISBN|0-7100-9350-0}}.
* Jenkins, Nicholas. (2024). The Island: War and Belonging in Auden’s England. [[Oxford University Press]]. {{ISBN|0-6740-2522-9}}.
* Kirsch, Arthur (2005). ''Auden and Christianity''. New Haven: [[Yale University Press]]. {{ISBN|0-300-10814-1}}.
* [[Edward Mendelson|Mendelson, Edward]] (1981). ''Early Auden''. New York: [[Viking]]. {{ISBN|0-670-28712-1}}.
* [[Edward Mendelson|Mendelson, Edward]] (1999). ''Later Auden''. New York: [[Farrar, Straus and Giroux]]. {{ISBN|0-374-18408-9}}.
* [[Edward Mendelson|Mendelson, Edward]] (2017). ''Early Auden, Later Auden: A Critical Biography''. Princeton: [[Princeton University Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0-691-17249-1}}.
* Mitchell, Donald (1981), ''Britten and Auden in the Thirties: the year 1936''. London: Faber and Faber. {{ISBN|0-571-11715-5}}.
* [[Alan Myers (translator)|Myers, Alan]] and Forsythe, Robert (1999), ''W.&nbsp;H. Auden: Pennine Poet''  {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110709160010/http://www.forsythe.demon.co.uk/other_pages/BKAUD.HTM |date=9 July 2011 }}. Nenthead: North Pennines Heritage Trust. {{ISBN|0-9513535-7-8}}. Pamphlet with map and gazetteer.
* Sharpe, Tony, ed. (2013). ''W. H. Auden in Context'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-521-19657-4}}.
* Smith, Stan, ed. (2004). ''The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|0-521-53647-2}}.
* Spears, Monroe K. (1963). ''The Poetry of W. H. Auden: The Disenchanted Island''. New York: [[Oxford University Press]].

==Further reading==
* {{cite book |last1=Costello |first1=Bonnie |author1-link=Bonnie Costello |title=Auden At Work |date=2015 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-1-137-45292-4}}
* {{cite book |last1=Hecht |first1=Anthony |author1-link=Anthony Hecht |title=The Hidden Law: The Poetry of W.H. Auden |date=1993 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=0-674-39006-7}}
* {{cite news |last1=Huddleston |first1=Robert |title='Poetry Makes Nothing Happen' W. H. Auden's Struggle with Politics |url=https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/robert-huddleston-wh-auden-struggle-politics/ |publisher=Boston Review |date=25 February 2015}}
* {{cite book |last1=Mendelson |first1=Edward |author1-link=Edward Mendelson|title=Moral Agents: Eight Twentieth-Century American Writers |date=2015 |publisher=New York Review Books |isbn=978-1-59017-776-1}}
* {{cite book |last1=Osborne |first1=Charles |author1-link=Charles Osborne (music writer) |title=W. H. Auden: The Life of a Poet |date=1979 |publisher=Methuen |isbn=978-0-87131-788-9}}
* {{cite book |editor-last1=Spender |editor-first1=Stephen |editor-link=Stephen Spender| title=W.H. Auden: A Tribute |date=1975 |publisher=Weidenfeld and Nicolson |isbn=0-297-76884-0}}
* {{cite book |last1=Stroll |first1=John E. |title=W. H. Auden: A Reading |date=1970 |publisher=Ball State University}}
* {{cite book |last1=Wright |first1=George Thaddeus |title=W. H. Auden |date=1969 |publisher=Twayne Publishers |isbn=0-8057-7346-0 }}

==External links==
* [https://www.bl.uk/people/w-h-auden W. H. Auden material] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221209154628/https://www.bl.uk/people/w-h-auden/ |date=9 December 2022 }} at the [[British Library]]
* [https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F49308 W. H. Auden material] at the [[UK National Archives]]
* [https://audensociety.org W. H. Auden Society]
* {{OL author}}
* [https://poets.org/poet/w-h-auden Poetry by W. H. Auden] at the [[Academy of American Poets]]
* ''[https://amp.acdh.oeaw.ac.at Auden Musulin Papers: A Digital Edition of W. H. Auden's Letters to Stella Musulin]'' at the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage

{{W. H. Auden}}
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