W.H. Auden

Auden was born 21 February 1907, in York, the son of a physician. At first interested in science, he soon turned to poetry. In 1925 he entered Christ Church College, University of Oxford, where he became the centre of a group of literary intellectuals that included Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, C. Day Lewis, And Louis MacNeice. After graduation he was schoolmaster in Scotland and England for five years.

In London, in the early 1930s, Auden belonged to a circle of promising young poets who were strongly leftist. His book Poems, which helped to establish his reputation, focused on the breakdown of English capitalist society but also showed a deep concern with psychological problems. He subsequently wrote three verse plays with Isherwood: The Dog Beneath the Skin, The Ascent of F-6, and On the Frontier. In 1937 he drove an ambulance for the Loyalists in the Spanish civil war. In the same year he was awarded the King's Gold Medal for Poetry, a major honour. Trips to Iceland and China - the first with MacNeice, the second with Isherwood - resulted in two jointly written books, Letter from Iceland, and Journey to a War.

In 1939 Auden moved to the US, where he became a citizen and was active as a poet, reviewer, lecturer and editor. His Double Man and For the Times Being reflect an increasing concern with religion,