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Edward Mendelson has significantly expanded his authoritative,
chronological ordered edition of Auden's Selected Poems (first
published in 1979), adding twenty items to the hundred in the
original edition, and broadening the focus to reflect the wealth of
forms, the rhetorical and tonal range, and the variousness of
content in Auden's poetry, in the confines of one volume. In
particular, there are newly included examples of Auden's mastery of
light verse: the self-descriptive sequence of haiku called
'Profiles', the barbed wartime quatrains of 'Leap Before You Look',
or 'Funeral Blues' itself. Also included are brief notes explaining
references that may have become obscure, and a revised introduction
drawing on recent additions to Auden scholarship.
Another Time was the first volume that Auden published after his departure to America with Christopher Isherwood in January 1939. It was dedicated to Chester Kallman. The poems, some of which date from the early thirties, are about people, places and the intellectual climate of the times, and they show greater variety of tone and technique than in any previous book of Auden's. Some of his most famous and often quoted (or misquoted) lines appear in their original form, including the text of two poems in particular - 'Spain 1937' and 'September 1,1939' - that he later altered or repudiated.
This beautifully designed edition forms part of a series of ten titles celebrating Faber's publishing over the decades.
When The Orators was originally published in 1932 it was described
by Poetry Review as 'something as important as the appearance of Mr
Eliot's poems fifteen years ago'. A long poem written in both prose
and verse, it was a powerful addition to the canon of modernist
poetry.
Brecht projects an ancient Chinese story onto a realistic setting
in Soviet Georgia. In a theme that echoes the Judgment of Solomon,
two women argue over the possession of a child. Thanks to the
unruly judge, Azdak (one of Brecht's most vivid creations) natural
justice is done and the peasant Grusha keeps the child she loves,
even though she is not its mother. Written while Brecht was in
exile in the United States during the Second World War, The
Caucasian Chalk Circle is a politically charged, much-revived and
complex example of Brecht's epic theatre. This new Student Edition
contains introductory commentary and notes by Kristopher Imbrigotta
from the University of Puget Sound, US, offering a much-needed
contemporary perspective on the play. The introduction covers: -
narrative structure: play about a play within a play ("circle") -
songs and music - justice and social systems - context: Brecht,
exile, WWII, socialism - notions of collective and class - fable
and story adaptation, folk fairy tale
The second of two volumes of the eagerly anticipated first complete
edition of Auden's poems-including some that have never been
published before W. H. Auden (1907-1973) is one of the greatest
poets of the twentieth century, and his reputation has only grown
since his death. Published on the hundredth anniversary of the year
in which he began to write poetry, this is the second volume of the
first complete edition of Auden's poems. Edited, introduced, and
annotated by renowned Auden scholar Edward Mendelson, this
definitive edition includes all the poems Auden wrote for
publication, in their original texts, and all his later revised
versions, as well as poems and songs he never published, some of
them printed here for the first time. This volume follows Auden as
a mature artist, containing all the poems that he published or
submitted for publication from 1940 until his death in 1973, at age
sixty-six. This includes all his poetry collections from this
period, from The Double Man (1941) through Epistle to a Godson
(1972). The volume also features an edited version of his
incomplete, posthumous book Thank You, Fog, as well as his
self-designated "posthumous" poems. The main text presents the
poems in their original published versions. The notes include the
extensive revisions that he made to his poems over the course of
his career, and provide explanations of obscure references. The
first volume of this edition, Poems, Volume I: 1927-1939, is also
available.
Another Time was the first volume that Auden published after his
departure to America with Christopher Isherwood in January 1939. It
was dedicated to Chester Kallman. The poems, some of which date
from the early thirties, are about people, places and the
intellectual climate of the times, and they show greater variety of
tone and technique than in any previous book of Auden's. Some of
his most famous and often quoted (or misquoted) lines appear in
their original form, including the text of two poems in particular
- 'Spain 1937' and 'September 1,1939' - that he later altered or
repudiated. '[He] has made himself into a kind of unofficial poet
laureate. If I am bombed I hope he will write a few sapphics about
me.' Stephen Spender, 1941
This collection presents all the poems Auden wished to preserve, in
the texts that received his final approval. It included the full
contents of his previous collected editions along with all the
later volumes of his shorter poems. Together, these works display
the astonishing range of Auden's voice and the breadth of his
concerns, his deep knowledge of the traditions he inherited, and
his ability to recast those traditions in modern times.
Who is a major, who is a minor poet? Inevitably, in his
introduction, W. H. Auden offers a stimulating rationale for
distinguishing between the two. To paraphrase him, one cannot say
that a major poet always writes better poems than a minor poet. Nor
is it a matter of pleasure the poet gives an individual reader -
Auden himself confesses to not liking Shelley but being 'delighted
by every line of William Barnes', but not doubting for a moment the
former is a major poet and the latter a minor one. One does not
always enjoy what one most admires. Yet everyone is to some extent
familiar with the work of the major nineteenth century poets and
few have had the chance to read the patriotic poems of Thomas
Campbell, several of which rank among the finest such poems in
English literature, the songs of Tom Moore or his political and
social satires, the humorous verse of Thomas Hood, the superb
lyrics of Thomas Lovell Beddoes, the odes of Coventry Patmore, the
satirical poems of Samuel Butler. These poets and many more are
discerningly represented in this anthology which puts into the
limelight every genuine minor poet (they must have written at least
one good poem) born between 1770 and 1870.
'He is a very clever fellow, but he will never be a bishop.' George
III 'A more profligate parson I never met.' George IV 'I sat next
to Sydney Smith, who was delightful ... I don't remember a more
agreeable party.' Benjamin Disraeli 'I wish you would tell Mr
Sydney Smith that of all the men I ever heard of and never saw, I
have the greatest curiosity to see ... and to know him.' Charles
Dickens How one agrees with Dickens. Without doubt, Sydney Smith
was the most famous wit of his generation. But there was more to
him than that, he was an outstanding representative of the English
liberal tradition. Starting as an impoverished village curate he
went to Edinburgh as a tutor, and co-founded the Edinburgh Review,
the first major nineteenth-century periodical. Happily married, he
moved in 1803 to London, where he was introduced into the Holland
House circle - of which he quickly became an admired and popular
member - but at the age of thirty-eight a Tory government banished
him to a village parsonage. There he became 'one of the best
country vicars of whom there is a record', and after his two chief
causes - the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 and the Reform Bill
of 1832 - triumphed, he was rewarded by a canonry of St. Paul's.
This generous selection of his writings gives the full flavour of
his mind and intellectual personality. In a characteristically
stimulating introduction in which he discusses Sydney Smith both as
an individual and as a shining exemplar of the liberal mind, W. H.
Auden places him with Jonathan Swift and Bernard Shaw among the few
polemic authors 'who must be ranked very high by any literary
standard.' As Macaulay said he was 'The Smith of Smiths'.
Owen Barfield's original and thought-provoking works over
three-quarters of a century have made him a legendary cult figure.
History in English Words, his classic historical excursion through
the English language, is now back in print after five years. This
popular book is a brief and brilliant history of the peoples who
have spoken the Indo-European tongues. It is illustrated throughout
by current English words whose derivation from other languages,
whose history in use and changes of meaning, record and unlock the
larger history. "In our language alone, not to speak of its many
companions, the past history of humanity is spread out in an
imperishable map, just as the history of the mineral earth lies
embedded in the layers of its outer crust.... Language has
preserved for us the inner, living history of our soul. It reveals
the evolution of consciousness".
In the summer of 1936, W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice visited
Iceland on commission to write a travel book, but found themselves
capturing concerns on a scale that were far more international.
'Though writing in a "holiday" spirit,' commented Auden, 'its
authors were all the time conscious of a threatening horizon to
their picnic - world-wide unemployment, Hitler growing everyday
more powerful and a world-war more inevitable.' The result is the
remarkable Letters from Iceland, a collaboration in poetry and
prose, reportage and correspondence, published in 1937 with the
Spanish Civil War newly in progress, beneath the shadow of looming
world war.
The first of two volumes of the eagerly anticipated first complete
edition of Auden's poems-including some that have never been
published before W. H. Auden (1907-1973) is one of the greatest
poets of the twentieth century, and his reputation has only grown
since his death. Published on the hundredth anniversary of the year
in which he began to write poetry, this is the first of two volumes
of the first complete edition of Auden's poems. Edited, introduced,
and annotated by renowned Auden scholar Edward Mendelson, this
definitive edition includes all the poems Auden wrote for
publication, in their original texts, and all his later revised
versions, as well as poems and songs he never published, some of
them printed here for the first time. This volume traces the
development of Auden's early career, and contains all the poems,
including juvenilia, that he published or submitted for
publication, from his first printed work, in 1927, at age twenty,
through the poems he wrote during his first months in America, in
1939, when he was thirty-two. The book also includes poems that
Auden wrote during his adult career with the expectation that he
might publish them, but which he never did; song lyrics that he
wrote to be set to music by Benjamin Britten, but which he never
put into print; and verses that he wrote for magazines at schools
where he was teaching. The main text presents the poems in their
original published versions. The notes include the extensive
revisions that he made to his poems over the course of his career,
and provide explanations of obscure references. The second volume
of this edition, Poems, Volume 2: 1940-1973, is also available.
Auden's electrifying, enigmatic and extraordinarily influential
debut collection was published by Faber in 1930, and simply
entitled Poems. For the second edition (1933) he omitted seven
items and added new poems in their place. Available again for the
first time since 1950, this reissue follows the text of the second
edition.
This fifth volume of W. H. Auden's prose displays a great writer's
mind in its full maturity of wisdom, learning, and emotional and
moral intelligence. It contains his most personally revealing
essays, the ones in which he wrote for the first time about the
full history of his family life, his sexuality, and the development
of his moral and religious beliefs. Among these works are the
lightly disguised autobiographies that appear in long essays on the
Protestant mystics and on Shakespeare's sonnets. The book also
features the full text of his T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures,
Secondary Worlds, and many unpublished or unavailable lectures and
speeches. Edward Mendelson's introduction and comprehensive notes
provide biographical and historical explanations of obscure
references. The text includes corrections and revisions that Auden
marked in personal copies of his work and that are published here
for the first time.
W. H. Auden was born in York in 1907. His first full-length
collection, Poems, was published by T. S. Eliot at Faber and Faber
in 1930. The many volumes he published thereafter included poetry,
plays, essays and libretti, and his ceaseless experimentation,
consummate craftsmanship and originality established him as one of
the most influential poets of the twentieth century. He died in
1973.
Between 1927 and his death in 1973, W. H. Auden endowed poetry in the English language with a new face. Or rather, with several faces, since his work ranged from the political to the religious, from the urbane to the pastoral, from the mandarin to the invigoratingly plain-spoken.
This collection presents all the poems Auden wished to preserve, in the texts that received his final approval. It includes the full contents of his previous collected editions along with all the later volumes of his shorter poems. Together, these works display the astonishing range of Auden's voice and the breadth of his concerns, his deep knowledge of the traditions he inherited, and his ability to recast those traditions in modern times.
A collection of W.H. Auden's light verse, assembled by his literary
executor.
From one of the great modern writers, the acclaimed lectures in
which he draws on a lifetime of experience to take the measure of
Shakespeare's plays and sonnets "W. H. Auden, poet and critic, will
conduct a course on Shakespeare at the New School for Social
Research beginning Wednesday. Mr. Auden . . . proposes to read all
Shakespeare's plays in chronological order." So the New York Times
reported on September 27, 1946, giving notice of a rare opportunity
to hear one of the century's great poets discuss at length one of
the greatest writers of all time. Reconstructed by Arthur Kirsch,
these lectures offer remarkable insights into Shakespeare's plays
and sonnets while also adding immeasurably to our understanding of
Auden.
Faber are pleased to announce the relaunch of the poetry list -
starting in Spring 2001 and continuing, with publication dates each
month, for the rest of the year. This will involve a new jacket
design recalling the typographic virtues of the classic Faber
poetry covers, connecting the backlist and the new titles within a
single embracing cover solution. A major reissue program is
scheduled, to include classic individual collections from each
decade, some of which have long been unavailable: Wallace Stevens's
Harmonium and Ezra Pound's Personae from the 1920s; W.H. Auden's
Poems (1930); Robert Lowell's Life Studies from the 1950s; John
Berryman's 77 Dream Songs and Philip Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings
from the 1960s; Ted Hughes's Gaudete and Seamus Heaney's Field Work
from the 1970s; Michael Hofmann's Acrimony and Douglas Dunn's
Elegies from the 1980s. Timed to celebrate publication of Seamus
Heaney's new collection, Electric Light, the relaunch is intended
to re-emphasize the predominance of Faber Poetry, and to celebrate
a series which has played a shaping role in the history of modern
poetry since its inception in the 1920s.
"For the Time Being" is a pivotal book in the career of one of
the greatest poets of the twentieth century. W. H. Auden had
recently moved to America, fallen in love with a young man to whom
he considered himself married, rethought his entire poetic and
intellectual equipment, and reclaimed the Christian faith of his
childhood. Then, in short order, his relationship fell apart and
his mother, to whom he was very close, died. In the midst of this
period of personal crisis and intellectual remaking, he decided to
write a poem about Christmas and to have it set to music by his
friend Benjamin Britten. Applying for a Guggenheim grant, Auden
explained that he understood the difficulty of writing something
vivid and distinctive about that most cliched of subjects, but
welcomed the challenge. In the end, the poem proved too long and
complex to be set by Britten, but in it we have a remarkably
ambitious and poetically rich attempt to see Christmas in double
focus: as a moment in the history of the Roman Empire and of
Judaism, and as an ever-new and always contemporary event for the
believer. "For the Time Being" is Auden's only explicitly religious
long poem, a technical tour de force, and a revelatory window into
the poet's personal and intellectual development. This edition
provides the most accurate text of the poem, a detailed
introduction by Alan Jacobs that explains its themes and sets the
poem in its proper contexts, and thorough annotations of its
references and allusions."
When it was first published in 1947, "The Age of Anxiety"--W. H.
Auden's last, longest, and most ambitious book-length
poem--immediately struck a powerful chord, capturing the
imagination of the cultural moment that it diagnosed and named.
Beginning as a conversation among four strangers in a barroom on
New York's Third Avenue, Auden's analysis of Western culture during
the Second World War won the Pulitzer Prize and inspired a symphony
by Leonard Bernstein as well as a ballet by Jerome Robbins. Yet
reviews of the poem were sharply divided, and today, despite its
continuing fame, it is unjustly neglected by readers.
This volume--the first annotated, critical edition of the
poem--introduces this important work to a new generation of readers
by putting it in historical and biographical context and
elucidating its difficulties. Alan Jacobs's introduction and
thorough annotations help today's readers understand and appreciate
the full richness of a poem that contains some of Auden's most
powerful and beautiful verse, and that still deserves a central
place in the canon of twentieth-century poetry.
W. H. Auden was once described as the Picasso of modern poetry - a
tribute to his ceaseless experimentation with form and subject
matter. Beginning with Anglo-Saxon poetry and ending with an
Horatian expansiveness and conversational sweep, this volume is
essential reading for anyone seriously interested in modern poetry
after T. S. Eliot. In his lifetime a controversial, outspoken, yet
enigmatic, writer, Auden has gradually come to seem an intimate
poet, as we have learned to read him correctly. This volume is the
best possible introduction to his consummate craftsmanship and his
unparalleled originality which made him the master-poet of his
generation.
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