W.H. Auden

W.H. Auden is one of the most influential English voices of the twentieth century. As the pre-eminent figure of the 1930s group of poets - including such luminaries as Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day Lewis - his work struck a new and modern note in its unashamed engagement with the social and political issues of the period. Following his self-exile to the United States at the outset of the Second World War, his work took on a less direct, less dramatic quality and concerned itself with questions of morals, ethics, philosophy and religion in his exploration of the human condition. Stephen Wade provides an interpretation of Auden's major themes and preoccupations throughout his long career. Clear sighted and balanced, he demonstrates - despite the poet's occasonal failures in his experiments in poetic form and his tendency for over-abstraction - why Auden's work is of central importance for any wish to understand fully contemporary British poetry.

About the author:

Stephen Wade is a lecturer, critic and poet.

96  pages

ISBN: 978-1-871551-36-5