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.

To help readers understand Auden's work, the poet and scholar John Fuller examines all of Auden's published poems, plays, and libretti, leaving out only some juvenilia. In unprecedented detail, he reviews the works' publishing history, paraphrases difficult passages, and explains allusions. He points out interesting variants (including material abandoned in drafts), identifies sources, looks at verse forms, and offers critical interpretations. Along the way, he presents a wealth of facts about Auden's works and life that are available in no other publication.

For many years there existed a general feeling that the selection made by Auden himself in 1968 was far from satisfactory. It was too short to provide a full introduction to such a large body of work; perhaps it was too weighted in favour of the later poetry; at the time it was made some famous poems, or portions of poems were still under an embargo imposed by Auden himself which remained in force until his death. This edition contains an introduction which is an examination of the nature of Auden's genius and of his position and stature in 20th-century literature.

'For a poet like myself, an autobiography is redundant' Auden wrote to a friend, 'since anything of importance that happens to one is immediately incorporated, however obscurely, in a poem.' This scholarly book is the history of Auden's poems, and of the events that went into them, from the time he moved to America in 1939 until his death in Austria in 1973. It completes the study begun by Professor Mendelson in his standard Early Auden. Later Auden links the changes in Auden's intellectual, religious and domestic life with his shifting public roles - as representative of political causes, as a researcher working for the army in post-war Germany, as public moralist, lecturer and teacher, and above all as poet and thinker. Mendelson shows how Auden converted the success and later wreckage of his relationship with Chester Kallman into the seemingly impersonal meditations of his long poems, and explores theways his later poetry celebrates the human body. Throughout he reveals the depth of Auden's struggles with himself and with the temptations of his growing fame, showing how these struggles gave shape to his imperishable art.

English-born poet, whose world view developed from youthful rebellion to rediscovered Anglo-Catholicism. In his work Auden reconciled tradition and modernism. Auden is widely considered among the greatest literary figures of the 20th century.