Auden, << AW duhn, >> W. H. (1907-1973), an English-born poet, is best known for the remarkable variety of his works. He wrote ballads, blues, limericks, sonnets, nonsense verse, oratorios, free verse, librettos (words) for operas, and dramas. Auden won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his book-length poem The Age of Anxiety.
Wystan Hugh Auden was born on Feb. 21, 1907, in York. He attended Oxford University, where he was the leader of a group of brilliant writers. In the 1940’s, he turned to Christianity and psychoanalysis as partial solutions to the problems of civilization. Auden settled in the United States in 1939 and became a U.S. citizen in 1946. In 1972, he returned to Oxford to live.
Auden collaborated with Christopher Isherwood on travel books and some symbolic and satirical plays in the 1930’s, including The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935) and The Ascent of F6 (1936). He helped write the libretto for Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s opera The Rake’s Progress (1951). Many of Auden’s critical essays appear in The Dyer’s Hand (1963). He died on Sept. 29, 1973.
