Works by
W.H. Auden
(Writer)
[February 21, 1907 - September 29, 1973]

 

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As Editor

• Poets Tongue (1935) with John Garrett

• The Oxford Book of Light Verse (1938)

• The Portable Greek Reader (1948)

• Poets of the English Language (1950) with Norman Holmes Pearson

• The Faber Book of Modern American Verse (1956)
  Also known as The Criterion Book of Modern American Verse.

• The Viking Book of Aphorisms (1964) with Louis Kronenberger
  Also known as The Faber Book of Aphorisms.

• Nineteenth-Century British Minor Poets (1966)
  Also known as Nineteenth-Century Minor Poets.

As Translator

• The Magic Flute (1956) with Chester Kallman
  Emanuel Schikaneder's original German libretto to the Mozart opera Die Zauberflöte.

• Don Giovanni (1961) with Chester Kallman
  Lorenzo da Ponte's original Italian libretto to the Mozart opera.

• Italian Journey: 1786 - 1788  (1963) with Elizabeth Mayer
  Containing the letters and diaries that Goethe wrote during his journey to Italy at age thirty-seven, Italian Journey reveals his tremendous range of interests. His writings cover literature, art history and his own struggle to be a painter, various sciences and political events, personal encounters, and the Italian landscape. "In Rome," Goethe wrote, "I first found myself, for the first time I achieved inner harmony...." For Goethe the writer, this temporal and spiritual journey was at the root of his development from Sturm und Drang to classicism, a decisive point in his life and the history of German literature.

• The Elder Edda: A Selection (1969) with Paul B. Taylor

Essays

• Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

Plays

• The Dance of Death (1933)

• The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935) with Christopher Isherwood

• The Ascent of F6 (1937) with Christopher Isherwood

• On the Frontier 1939) with Christopher Isherwood)

Poetry

• Poems (1928)
  Private printing

• Poems (1930, 1933

• The Orators: An English Study (1932)

• Poems (1934

• The Ascent of F6 (1936

• Look, Stranger! (1936)

• Spain (1937)
  Pamphlet poem

• Letters from Iceland (1937

• On the Frontier (1938)

• Journey to a War (1939) with Christopher Isherwood

• Another Time (1940)

• The Double Man (1941)

• For the Time Being (1944)
  The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden (1945)

• The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (1947) -- Winner 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

• The Enchafèd Flood (1950)

• Collected Shorter Poems, 1930-1944 (1950)

• Nones (1951)

• The Shield of Achilles (1955) -- Winner 1956 National Book Award for Poetry

• Homage to Clio (1960)

• The Dyer's Hand (1962

• About the House (1965)

• Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 (1966)

• Collected Longer Poems (1968)

• Secondary Worlds (1969)

• City Without Walls and Other Poems (1969)

• A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970)

• Academic Graffiti (1971)

• Epistle to a Godson and Other Poems (1972)

• Thank You, Fog: Last Poems (1974)

Other

• "The Prolific and the Devourer" (1993)

• Lectures on Shakespeare -- 1946-47 ( 2001), Arthur Kirsch, ed.

See also:

• Christopher and His Kind: 1929 - 1939 (1976) by Christopher Isherwood

• Auden and Christianity (2005) by Arthur Kirsch

• 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 (2005) by Sherill Tippins -- Finalist Lambda Literary Award for Biography
  February House is the uncovered story of an extraordinary experiment in communal living, one involving young but already iconic writers -- and the country's best-known burlesque performer -- in a house at 7 Middagh Street in Brooklyn during 1940 and 1941. It was a fevered year-long party fueled by the appetites of youth and by the shared sense of urgency to take action as artists in the months before America entered the war. In spite of the sheer intensity of life at 7 Middagh, the house was for its residents a creative crucible.
  
  Carson McCullers's two masterpieces, The Member of the Wedding and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, were born, bibulously, in Brooklyn. Gypsy Rose Lee, workman-like by day, party girl by night, wrote her book The G-String Murders in her Middagh Street bedroom. Auden -- who along with Britten was being excoriated at home in England for absenting himself from the war -- presided over the house like a peevish auntie, collecting rent money and dispensing romantic advice. And yet all the while he was composing some of the most important work of his career.
  
  Sherill Tippins's February House, enlivened by primary sources and an unforgettable story, masterfully recreates daily life at the most fertile and improbable live-in salon of the twentieth century. 
  
  See also Jane Bowles and Paul Bowles