Robert A. Wilson W. H. Auden collection

W. H. Auden (1907-1973) was an English and American poet, translator, librettist, playwright, and essayist. Auden is best known for his stylized and technical Modernist poetry which engaged a variety of political, social, cultural, psychological, and religious themes. Auden is also known for his collaborations with Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood on several dramatic works and for his original and translated opera librettos in collaboration with American poet and librettist Chester Kallman.

Wystan Hugh Auden was born on February 21, 1907, in York, England. He attended St. Edmund’s School in Surrey and later Gresham’s School in Holt. As a young man, he began writing poetry in the style of poets he admired such as William Wordsworth, Walter de la Mare, W. H. Davies, George Russell, Emily Dickinson, A. E. Housman, and Robert Frost, among others.

In October 1925, Auden began studying at Christ Church at the University of Oxford. Around this time, his poetry began to shift from a lyrical style to a modern approach akin to T. S. Eliot’s, who Auden had recently discovered. At Christ Church, Auden made close friendships with poets and literary enthusiasts Christopher Isherwood, Cecil Day-Lewis, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender. Auden and Isherwood would become frequent collaborators, as well as intermittent romantic partners, over the course of their acquaintance.

A short run of Auden’s first book of poetry, the small volume Poems, was printed by Stephen Spender in 1928. Auden later revised Poems, and in 1930 it was published by Faber and Faber, at the time under the direction of T. S. Eliot.

After completing his degree at Christ Church in 1928, Auden became briefly engaged to a Birmingham woman, Sheilah Richardson, but after travelling to Berlin for a year to study with English anthropologist John Layard, Auden broke his engagement. In Berlin, Auden wrote his first dramatic work, Paid on Both Sides, which was published in Eliot’s The Criterion magazine in 1930. Paid on Both Sides was also included in the 1930 Poems revision along with new poems by Auden.

In the early 1930s, Auden taught at private schools in England, continued to develop his verse, and wrote a series of dramatic works, some in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood. In 1935, Auden married lesbian writer, actress, and correspondent Erika Mann so that she would gain British citizenship after the Nazi regime denied her citizenship rights in her native Germany. He maintained periodic contact with Mann and the two remained married until Mann’s death in 1969. With Isherwood, he wrote the play The Ascent of F6 in Portugal in 1936, and spent time writing Iceland before briefly volunteering for the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. In 1938, he and Isherwood travelled to China on commission by Faber and Faber, and the two worked on their resulting book Journey to a War in Brussels later that year.

In 1939, Auden and Isherwood left England for New York. A few months after arriving, Auden met and fell in love with American poet and librettist Chester Kallman and decided to remain in the United States. Soon after, Auden and Kallman entered a romantic relationship which ultimately ended, but the two remained close friends, collaborators, and companions until Auden’s death in 1973. Notably, they collaborated on the libretto for The Rake’s Progress (1951), an opera by Igor Stravinsky.

After moving to New York, Auden taught at several American universities, including the New School for Social Research. In 1948, Auden received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his poetic work The Age of Anxiety. From 1954-1973, he served as a chancellor of the Academy of American poets.

In 1968, Auden’s Two Songs was published by Phoenix Book Shop, run by Robert A. Wilson. Auden decided to leave New York for Oxford in 1972, with no plans to return, and Wilson was gifted a significant amount of Auden’s New York personal library and papers. Auden died in Vienna in 1973. His estate was left to Chester Kallman who gifted Auden’s remaining personal papers to the New York Public Library shortly before his own passing in 1975.

"Wystan Hugh Auden." Encyclopedia of World Biography Online, Gale, 1998. Gale In Context: Biography | Accessed December 17, 2021: link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1631000328/BIC?u=udel_main&sid=bookmark-BIC&xid=560c9f21. Accessed 17 Dec. 2021. Mendelson, Edward. "Auden, Wystan Hugh (1907–1973), poet and writer." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004 | Accessed December 17, 2021: https://www-oxforddnb-com.udel.idm.oclc.org/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-30775. Additional biographical information derived from the collection.