Auden : [biography

Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 5 Contents......Page 9 Prologue: 'What goal but the black stone?'......Page 13 1 'A typical little highbrow and difficult child'......Page 18 2 'I knew that very moment what I wished to do'......Page 46 3 'I mean to be a great poet'......Page 63 Illustrations......Page 103 4 'I'm king of Berlin'......Page 99 5 'To love; to be loved; to be a teacher; to be a pupil'......Page 135 6 'The cold controlled ferocity of the human species'......Page 166 7 'Mr Right has come into my life'......Page 202 Illustrations......Page 219 8 'Disgraces to keep hidden from the world'......Page 256 9 'I was glad I could be unhappy'......Page 293 Illustrations......Page 335 10 'And I, submissive, felt unwanted and went out'......Page 343 Epilogue: 'God may reduce you on Judgment Day '......Page 378 Acknowledgments......Page 383 Abbreviations used in source notes......Page 385 Sources......Page 389 Index......Page 429 This biography of W.H. Auden, one of the best-known English poets of the century, is not only a study of his life and ideas, but a commentary on the wars, ideologies and attitudes of his times. It argues that his life reached its pitch of intellectual integrity during the 1940s and 1950s.