W. H. Auden (21 February 1907 – 18 September 1973) was a poet who wrote about the dissolution of culture and civilization. He won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for his poem The Age of Anxiety.
Fun Facts about W.H. Auden:
- Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England to a family of minor nobility. His father, George Augustus Auden, was a physician, and his mother, Constance Rosalie Auden, who was a nurse by trade but never in practice.
- Mr. Auden believed that his family had Icelandic ancestors and much of his work shows his fascination with Norse sagas.
- At St. Edmund’s School, Mr. Auden met Christopher Isherwood, who would later become a famous n novelist. Auden and Isherwood met again on Oxford and struck a lifelong friendship.
- He published his first poem in 1923 at a school newspaper. A year before he played Katherina in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shew and was noted for playing her with dignity despite the passionate outbursts
- While attending Oxford he first majored in biology, but by his second year he changed it to English. J. R. R. Tolkien was one of his lecturers about Old English poetry.
- W.H. Auden’s first book, Poems, was published in 1930 by Faber and Faber, who published all his books ever since. The book was accepted for publication by no other than poet T. S. Eliot.
- While living in Germany, Mr. Auden married Erika Mann, daughter of novelist Thomas Mann, when the Nazis tried to strip her of German citizenship. This was a marriage of convenience so Erika could become a British citizen. Auden and Mann never lived together by were good friends for the rest of their lives.
- W. H. Auden published around 400 poems, seven long poems, hundreds of essays and reviews, plays and even collaborated on documentary films.
- Mr. Auden lived in England, German (before World War II), Austria, Italy and the United States. He considered himself to be a New Yorker, but not American.
- W. H. Auden lived most of the second half of his life in New York City and Vienna, Austria where he passed away.
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Sources:
W. H. Auden: 1907—1973 | The Poetry Foundation
The Messy Genius of W. H. Auden | The National Endowment for the Humanities
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Fun Facts Friday: W. H. Auden
DescriptionW. H. Auden (21 February 1907 – 18 September 1973) was a poet who wrote about the dissolution of culture and civilization. He won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for his poem The Age of Anxiety
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