W h auden

W.H.AUDEN: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE


THE CRITICAL HERITAGE SERIES

General Editor: B.C.Southam

The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of criticism on
major figures in literature. Each volume presents the contemporary
responses to a particular writer, enabling the student to follow the
formation of critical attitudes to the writer’s work and its place within a
literary tradition.
The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history
of criticism to fragments of contemporary opinion and little published
documentary material, such as letters and diaries.
Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included in
order to demonstrate fluctuations in reputation following the writer’s
death.


W.H.AUDEN
THE CRITICAL HERITAGE

Edited by

JOHN HAFFENDEN

London and New York

First published in 1983
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
11 New Fetter Lane
London EC4P 4EE
&
29 West 35th Street
New York, NY 10001

Compilation, introduction, notes and index © 1983 John Haffenden

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
ISBN 0-203-19851-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-19854-9 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-15940-7 (Print Edition)


General Editor’s Preface

T he reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and nearcontemporaries is evidence of considerable value to the student of
literature. On one side we learn a great deal about the state of criticism at
large and in particular about the development of critical attitudes
towards a single writer; at the same time, through private comments in
letters, journals or marginalia, we gain an insight upon the tastes and
literary thought of individual readers of the period. Evidence of this kind

helps us to understand the writer’s historical situation, the nature of his
immediate reading-public, and his response to these pressures.
The separate volumes in the Critical Heritage Series present a record
of this early criticism. Clearly, for many of the highly productive and
lengthily reviewed nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers, there exists
an enormous body of material; and in these cases the volume editors
have made a selection of the most important views, significant for their
intrinsic critical worth or for their representative quality—perhaps even
registering incomprehension!
For earlier writers, notably pre-eighteenth century, the materials are
much scarcer and the historical period has been extended, sometimes far
beyond the writer’s lifetime, in order to show the inception and growth
of critical views which were initially slow to appear.
In each volume the documents are headed by an Introduction,
discussing the material assembled and relating the early stages of the
author’s reception to what we have come to identify as the critical
tradition. The volumes will make available much material which would
otherwise be difficult of access and it is hoped that the modern reader
will be thereby helped towards an informed understanding of the ways in
which literature has been read and judged.

B.C.S
v


For Sue
who suffered it


Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTE ON THE SELECTION AND TEXT
INTRODUCTION
ABBREVIATIONS

page xv
xix
1
76

‘Paid on Both Sides’ (‘Criterion’, January 1930)
1

WILLIAM EMPSON, review, ‘Experiment’, Spring

1931

78
‘Poems’ (September 1930)

2

NAOMI MITCHISON, review, ‘Week-end Review’,

3

DILYS POWELL, review, ‘Sunday Times’, December

October 1930

81

1930

83

4

MICHAEL ROBERTS, review, ‘Adelphi’, December

5

LOUIS MACNEICE, review, ‘Oxford Outlook’,

1930

84

March 1931
F.R.LEAVIS, unsigned review, ‘Times Literary
Supplement’, March 1931
7 M.D.ZABEL, review, ‘Poetry’, May 1931
8 DUDLEY FITTS, review, ‘Hound and Horn’, Summer
1931

86

6

88
91
92

‘The Orators’ (May 1932)
9

WILLIAM PLOMER, review, ‘Sunday Referee’, May

1932
10

94

ALAN PRYCE-JONES, review, ‘London Mercury’,

May 1932

95

11

A.C.BROCK, unsigned review, ‘Times Literary

12
13

Supplement’, June 1932
F.R.LEAVIS, unsigned review, ‘Listener’, June 1932
STEPHEN SPENDER, essay, ‘Twentieth Century’,

July 1932

vii

98
100
101


viii Contents
14

GEOFFREY GRIGSON, review, ‘Saturday Review’,

July 1932
15
16
17

MICHAEL ROBERTS, review, ‘Adelphi’, August 1932
BONAMY DOBRÉE, review, ‘Spectator’, August 1932
JOHN HAYWARD, review, ‘Criterion’, October

1932
18

112

GRAHAM GREENE, review, ‘Oxford Magazine’,

November 1932
19

106
107
110

115

HUGH GORDON PORTEUS, review, ‘Twentieth

Century’, February 1933
HENRY BAMFORD PARKES, review, ‘Symposium’,
April 1933
21 JOHN GOULD FLETCHER, review, ‘Poetry’, May 1933
22 ROBERT PENN WARREN, review, ‘American Review’,
May 1934
23 STEPHEN SPENDER, from ‘The Destructive Element’,
1935

116

20

121
125
128
133

An uncompleted ‘epic’ (1932–3)

24

HAROLD NICOLSON, from his diary, August 1933

‘The Witnesses’ (‘Listener’, Poetry Supplement,
July 1933)
25 T.S.ELIOT, from a report to the BBC, Autumn 1933

136

138

‘Poems’, second edition (November 1933)
26

27
28
29
30
31

F.R.LEAVIS, review, ‘Scrutiny’, June 1934

‘The Dance of Death’ (November 1933)
A. The Text
JOHN PUDNEY, review, ‘Week-end Review’,
December 1933
D.G.BRIDSON, review, ‘New English Weekly’,
December 1933
C.DAY-LEWIS, from ‘A Hope for Poetry’, 1934

B. The Productions
A.DESMOND HAWKINS, review, ‘New English
Weekly’, April 1934
MICHAEL SAYERS, review, ‘New English Weekly’,
October 1935

140

144
145
148

150
151


Contents

32

ix

A.L.MORTON, review, ‘Daily Worker’, October

1935

152

33

HAROLD HOBSON, review, ‘Christian Science

34

Monitor’, October 1935
ASHLEY DUKES, review, ‘Theatre Arts Monthly’,
December 1935

154
156

‘Poems’ (American edition, September 1934)
35
36

JAMES BURNHAM, review, ‘Nation’, August 1934
RUTH LECHLITNER, review, ‘New York Herald

160

Tribune’, September 1934
MALCOLM COWLEY, review, ‘New Republic’, September
1934

163

37

38
39

40
41
42

43
44

‘The Dog Beneath the Skin’ (May 1935)
A. The Text
IAN PARSONS, review, ‘Spectator’, June 1935
A.L.MORTON, review, ‘Daily Worker’, July 1935
MONTAGU SLATER, two reviews, ‘Left Review’, July
and October 1935
LOUISE BOGAN, review, ‘New Republic’, November
1935
JOHN LEHMANN, review essay, ‘International
Literature’, April 1936
B. The Production
DEREK VERSCHOYLE, review, ‘Spectator’, February
1936
CYRIL CONNOLLY, review, ‘New Statesman and
Nation’, February 1936

165

169
171
172
174
176

183
185

‘The Ascent of F6’ (September 1936)
A. The Text
45
46

E.M.FORSTER, review, ‘Listener’, October 1936
STEPHEN SPENDER, review, ‘Left Review’,

November 1936
BEN BELITT, review, ‘Nation’, April 1937
WYNDHAM LEWIS, from ‘Blasting and Bombardiering’,
1937
49 STEPHEN SPENDER, essay, ‘New Writing’, Autumn
1938
47
48

189
191
197
198
199


x Contents
B. The Productions

A.R.HUMPHREYS, review, ‘Cambridge Review’,
April 1937
51 G.W.STONIER on the revival, ‘New Statesman and
Nation’, July 1939

50

52
53
54
55
56
57

‘Look, Stranger!’ (October 1936)
Combined reviews with ‘The Ascent of F6’
DILYS POWELL, two reviews, ‘London Mercury’,
October and November 1936
GAVIN EWART, two reviews, ‘University Forward’,
November 1936
F.R.LEAVIS, review, ‘Scrutiny’, December 1936
C.DAY-LEWIS, review, ‘Poetry’, January 1937
JANET ADAM SMITH, review, ‘Criterion’, January
1937
EDMUND WILSON, review, ‘New Republic’,
February 1937

206
211

214
219
222
226
228
232

‘Spain’ (May 1937)
58
59

C.DAY-LEWIS, review, ‘Listener’, May 1937
RICHARD GOODMAN, review, ‘Daily Worker’, June

236

1937

237

60

CYRIL CONNOLLY, review, ‘New Statesman and

Nation’, June 1937

238

‘Letters from Iceland’ (August 1937)
61

EDWARD SACKVILLE-WEST, review, ‘New Statesman

and Nation’, August 1937
62 Unsigned review, ‘Times Literary Supplement’,
August 1937
63 MICHAEL ROBERTS, review, ‘London Mercury’,
September 1937
64 EDWIN MUIR, review, ‘Criterion’, October 1937
From Auden Double Number, ‘New Verse’,
November 1937
65 CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD on Auden’s early poetry
66 STEPHEN SPENDER, Oxford to Communism
67 LOUIS MACNEICE, Letter to W.H.Auden

240
242
245
247

248
253
255


Contents

68
69
70

71

GEOFFREY GRIGSON, Auden as a Monster
KENNETH ALLOTT, Auden in the Theatre
EDGELL RICKWORD, Auden and Politics
TWELVE COMMENTS ON AUDEN:
i EDWIN MUIR
ii GEORGE BARKER
iii FREDERIC PROKOSCH
iv DAVID GASCOYNE
v DYLAN THOMAS
vi C.DAY-LEWIS
vii ALLEN TATE
viii CHARLES MADGE
ix HERBERT READ
x JOHN MASEFIELD
xi GRAHAM GREENE
xii SIR HUGH WALPOLE

‘On the Frontier’ (October 1938)
72 Unsigned review, ‘Times Literary Supplement’,
October 1938
73 KINGSLEY MARTIN, review, ‘New Statesman and
Nation’, November 1938
74 C.DAY-LEWIS, review, ‘Listener’, November 1938
75 JULIAN SYMONS on the dramatic canon, ‘Life and
Letters Today’, February 1939

xi
257

261
265
267
267
268
268
269
270
270
271
271
272
273
273
274

275
277
280
281

‘Journey to a War’ (March 1939)
76
77
78

EVELYN WAUGH, review, ‘Spectator’, March 1939
RANDALL SWINGLER, review, ‘Daily Worker’,

288

March 1939

291

WILLIAM PLOMER, review, ‘London Mercury’,

April 1939

292
294
297

79
80

GEOFFREY GRIGSON, review, ‘New Verse’, May 1939
LINCOLN KIRSTEIN, review, ‘Nation’, August 1939

81
82

MICHAEL ROBERTS, review, ‘Spectator’, July 1940
T.C.WORSLEY, review, ‘New Statesman and

301

Nation’, July 1940
WILLIAM EMPSON, review, ‘Life and Letters Today’,
August 1940

303

83

‘Another Time’ (February 1940)

306


xii Contents

84
85
86
87
88
89

‘The Double Man’ (March 1941) (English edition:
‘New Year Letter’)
MALCOLM COWLEY, review, ‘New Republic’, April
1941
RANDALL JARRELL, review, ‘Nation’, April 1941
BABETTE DEUTSCH, review, ‘Poetry’, June 1941
HERBERT READ, review, ‘Spectator’, June 1941
CHARLES WILLIAMS, review, ‘Dublin Review’, July
1941
RAYMOND WINKLER, review, ‘Scrutiny’, October
1941

309
312
315
318
321
323

‘For the Time Being’ (September 1944)
90

MARK SCHORER, review, ‘New York Times’, September

91

HARRY LEVIN, review, ‘New Republic’, September

1944

328

1944

331

92

DESMOND MACCARTHY, review, ‘Sunday Times’,

93

HUGH KINGSMILL, review, ‘New English Review’,

94

STEPHEN SPENDER, review, ‘Time and Tide’,

March 1945

334

May 1945

337

August 1945
95

341

R.G.LIENHARDT, review, ‘Scrutiny’, September

1945

344
‘The Collected Poetry’ (April 1945)

96

F.CUDWORTH FLINT, review, ‘New York Times’,

97
98

LOUISE BOGAN, review, ‘New Yorker’, April 1945
JOHN VAN DRUTEN, review, ‘Kenyon Review’, Summer

April 1945

1945

350
356
358

‘The Age of Anxiety’ (July 1947)
99

M.L.ROSENTHAL, review, ‘New York Herald Tribune’,

July 1947
100

September 1947
101

363

JACQUES BARZUN, review, ‘Harper’s Magazine’,

365

DELMORE SCHWARTZ, review, ‘Partisan Review’,

September-October 1947

368


Contents

xiii

GILES ROMILLY, review, ‘New Statesman and
Nation’, October 1948
103 PATRIC DICKINSON, review, ‘Horizon’, May 1949

371
374

‘Collected Shorter Poems, 1930–1944’
(March 1950)
104 GEORGE D.PAINTER, review, ‘Listener’, April 1950

377

102

‘Nones’ (February 1951)
105

G.S.FRASER, review, ‘New Statesman and Nation’,

March 1952
106 ROBIN MAYHEAD, review, ‘Scrutiny’, June 1952
107 Unsigned review, ‘Times Literary Supplement’,
July 1952

380
383
389

‘The Shield of Achilles’ (February 1955)
108

KARL SHAPIRO, review, ‘New York Times’, February

1955
109

393

HORACE GREGORY, review, ‘New York Herald

Tribune’, February 1955
RANDALL JARRELL, review, ‘Yale Review’, June 1955
DONALD DAVIE, review, ‘Shenandoah’, Autumn 1955
ANTHONY HARTLEY, review, ‘Spectator’, December
1955
113 EDMUND WILSON, essay, ‘New Statesman and

Nation’, June 1956

110
111
112

395
396
401
403
405

‘Homage to Clio’ (April 1960)
114
115
116
117

DONALD HALL, review, ‘New Statesman’, July 1960
PHILIP LARKIN, review, ‘Spectator’, July 1960
GRAHAM HOUGH, review, ‘Listener’, July 1960
THOM GUNN, review, ‘Yale Review’, Autumn 1960

118
119
120

JOHN UPDIKE, review, ‘Motive’, November 1965
C.B.COX, review, ‘Spectator’, February 1966
CHRISTOPHER RICKS, review, ‘New Statesman’,

412
414
420
421

‘About the House’ (July 1965)

February 1966
121 Unsigned review, ‘Times Literary Supplement’,
March 1966

424
429
434
436


xiv Contents
‘Collected Shorter Poems 1927–1957’
(November 1966)
122 JOHN CAREY, review, ‘New Statesman’, December
1966
123 JOHN WHITEHEAD, review, ‘Essays in Criticism’,
October 1967

439
440

‘Collected Longer Poems’ (October 1968)

124

RICHARD MAYNE, review, ‘New Statesman’,

December 1968

448
451

125

JEREMY ROBSON, review, ‘Encounter’, January 1970

126
127

JOHN BAYLEY, review, ‘Listener’, September 1969
JOHN FLETCHER, review, ‘Spectator’, December

456

1969

460

‘City Without Walls’ (September 1969)

128

MONROE K.SPEARS, review, ‘Yale Review’,

Autumn 1970

463

‘Epistle to a Godson’ (October 1972)
129
130

FRANK KERMODE, review, ‘Listener’, October 1972
CLIVE JAMES, unsigned review, ‘Times Literary

470

Supplement’, January 1973
DENIS DONOGHUE, review, ‘New York Review of
Books’, July 1973

473

131

480

‘Thank You, Fog’ (September 1974)
132

PHILIP TOYNBEE, review, ‘Observer’, September

133

JOHN FULLER, review, ‘New Review’, October 1974

134
135

SEAMUS HEANEY, Shorts, ‘Hibernia’, October 1976
IRVIN EHRENPREIS, review, ‘New York Review of

493

Books’, February 1977

496

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

505
516

1974

485
488

‘Collected Poems’ (September 1976)


Acknowledgments

While the selection and evaluations in this volume are
entirely my own responsibility, I am indebted to a number
of individuals and institutions for helping me with
information. I should like to thank in particular
Professor Edward Mendelson, for his advice on the
Introduction and Contents, and for his willingness both to
answer several letters and to track down certain reviews,
and Mr Brian Southam for his constructive reading of the
Introduction. Mr Charles Monteith kindly allowed me access
to the review archives of Faber & Faber Ltd, and I am
grateful to Miss Susan Oudôt for keeping me amply supplied
with files; also to Miss Mavis Pindard, Subsidiary Rights,
and to Miss Sarah Biggs, secretary to Mr Monteith, for
advice and information. I am deeply obliged to Mr John
Chapman and Miss Judith Cooper for the many hours they
spent on my behalf in tracing references to books and
articles about Auden in the post-1970 period, and to Miss
J.E.Friedman, Senior Lecturer in the Postgraduate School
of Librarianship and Information Science, University of
Sheffield, for enabling them to do so; to Dr Michael
Halls, Modern Archivist, King’s College Library,
Cambridge, for his courtesy and helpfulness during my
examination of the Keynes Papers; and to Mrs Frances
Hickson, the Society of Authors, and Miss Jane With, the
National Book League, for helping me to locate several
copyright holders and their representatives. I must also
express my gratitude to the staff of the Inter-Library
Loans Department, Sheffield University Library, and to the
staff of the British Library (Newspaper Library,

Department of Printed Books, and Students’ Room of the
Department of Manuscripts), for their continual
helpfulness and efficiency.

xv


xvi Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the following individuals for
answering postal queries: Dr John B.Auden; the late Mr
D.G.Bridson; Mr Humphrey Carpenter; Professor William
Coldstream; Mr Simon Dannreuther of Curtis Brown Academic
Ltd, London; Susan Dwyer of ‘Antaeus’, New York; Mrs
Valerie Eliot; Mr Jason Epstein of Random House, Inc., New
York; Mr Gavin Ewart; Professor Boris Ford; Mr Anthony
Hartley; Mr Desmond Hawkins; Ms Joanne Hurst, Assistant
General Manager of the ‘New Statesman’; Mr A.F.Hussey; Dr
Brian Inglis; Mr Lincoln Kirstein; Mr Perry H.Knowlton of
Curtis Brown Ltd, New York; John Lancaster, Librarian of
Special Collections, Amherst College Library; the late Mrs
Q.D.Leavis; Professor John Lucas; Mr A.L.Morton; Lady
Diana Mosley; the late Sir Oswald Mosley; Mr Chris Myant,
Assistant Editor of the ‘Morning Star’; the late Mr Ian
Parsons; Mr Hugh Gordon Porteus; Miss Alice Prochaska; Mr
Arnold Rattenbury; Mr C.H.Rolph; Mr Michael Sayers; Mr
Charles Seaton of the ‘Spectator’; Mr Robert Silvers of
the ‘New York Review of Books’; Miss Janet Adam Smith; Mr
Stephen Spender; Mr James Stern; Mr Julian Symons; the
late Mr Philip Toynbee; Mr Rex Warner; Mr John Whitehead;
my colleague Mr Derek Roper for his interest and

encouragement; and Mr Robert Medley, Miss Dilys Powell,
and Mrs Vera Russell, for talking to me about Auden.
I would like to thank the University of Sheffield for a
sabbatical leave during which much of the work for this
book was undertaken, and the University Research Fund for
grants towards the costs of research and typing.
It has not been possible in certain cases to locate the
proprietors of copyright material. All possible care has
been taken to trace the ownership of the selections
included and to make full acknowledgment for their use.
Previously unpublished writings of W.H.Auden © 1983 by
the Estate of W.H.Auden, Edward Mendelson, Literary
Executor. Printed by permission. All rights reserved.
Extracts from the letters of Lord Keynes are published by
permission of Sir Geoffrey Keynes. The extract from a
letter by Ashley Dukes is published by permission of Mrs
Angela Ellis. Two letters by W.B.Yeats are published by
kind permission of Senator Michael Yeats.
I am grateful to the following for permission to
reprint material within their copyright or other control:
Janet Adam Smith for Nos 4, 15, 56, 63, and 81; Miriam
Allott for No. 69; George Barker for No. 71 ii; John
Bayley for No. 126; the late D.G. Bridson for No. 28;
James Burnham for No. 20; the Carcanet Press for No. 70,
from ‘Literature in Society: Essays and Opinions II (1931–
1978)’, by Edgell Rickword (Copyright 1978 by Edgell
Rickword); ‘The Christian Science Monitor’ for No. 33, by
Harold Hobson (Copyright © 1935, renewed 1963, by The

Acknowledgments

xvii

Christian Science Publishing Society. All rights
reserved); Collins Publishers for No. 24, from ‘Diaries
and Letters’, by Harold Nicolson; Curtis Brown Ltd,
London, on behalf of Christopher Isherwood, for No. 65
(Copyright Christopher Isherwood); Patric Dickinson for
No. 103; Valerie Eliot for No. 25; Angela Ellis for No.
34; William Empson for Nos 1 and 83; ‘Encounter’ and
Jeremy Robson for No. 125; the Editors of ‘Essays in
Criticism’ and John Whitehead for No. 123; Gavin Ewart for
No. 53; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., and the Carcanet
Press for Nos 85 and 110, New Year Letter and an excerpt
from Recent Poetry, from ‘Kipling, Auden & Co.: Essays and
Reviews 1935–1964’ by Randall Jarrell (Copyright © 1941,
1955 by Mrs Randall Jarrell. Copyright renewed © 1969 by
Mrs Randall Jarrell); Cornelia Fitts for No. 8; John
Fuller for No. 133; David Gascoyne for No. 71 iv; Graham
Greene for Nos 18 and 71 xi; Geoffrey Grigson for Nos 14,
68, and 79; ‘Harper’s Magazine’ and Jacques Barzun for No.
100 (Copyright © 1947 by Jacques Barzun); Sir Rupert HartDavis for Nos 9, 71 xii, and 78; Desmond Hawkins for No.
30; ‘Hibernia’ for No. 134; David Higham Associates for
Nos 5 and 67, by Louis MacNeice, originally published in
‘Oxford Outlook’, 1931, and in ‘New Verse’, 1937,
respectively, for No. 27, from Poetry and Satire, by John
Pudney, originally published in the ‘Week-end Review’,
1933, and for No. 88, by Charles Williams, originally
published in the ‘Dublin Review’, 1941; David Higham

Associates and the Trustees for the copyrights of the late
Dylan Thomas for No. 71 v, originally published in ‘New
Verse’, 1937; Lady Hopkinson for No. 93; Graham Hough for
No. 116; A.R.Humphreys for No. 50; ‘International Herald
Tribune’ for Nos 36, 99, and 109; ‘The Kenyon Review’ and
Stephen G.Valensi on behalf of Carter Lodge Productions,
Inc., for No. 98 (Copyright 1945 by Kenyon College;
copyright renewed 1972); Frank Kermode for No. 129; King’s
College, Cambridge, and the Society of Authors as the
literary representative of the E.M.Forster Estate for No.
45; Alfred A.Knopf, Inc., for No. 118, Auden Fecit,
reprinted from ‘Picked-Up Pieces’ by John Updike
(Copyright © 1966 by John Updike); the late Q.D.Leavis for
Nos 6, 11, 12, 26, 54, 89, 95, and 106; John Lehroann for
No. 42; Ruth Limmer, literary executor of the Estate of
Louise Began, for No. 97, originally published in ‘The New
Yorker’, 1945; Charles Madge for No. 71 viii; Naomi
Mitchison for No. 2; Morning Star Co-operative Society Ltd
for Nos 32, 39, 59, and 77; ‘The Nation’ for No. 47; ‘The
Nation’ and James Burnham for No. 35; ‘The Nation’ and
Lincoln Kirstein for No. 80; ‘The New Republic’ for Nos
37, 41, 57, 84, and 91; ‘The New Statesman’ for Nos 44,
51, 60, 61, 73, 82, 102, 105, 113, 114, 120, 122, and 124;


xviii Acknowledgments
‘The New York Review of Books’ for Nos 131 and 135,
reprinted with permission from ‘The New York Review of
Books’ (Copyright © 1973, 1977 Nyrev Inc.); ‘The New York
Times’ for Nos 90, 96, and 108 (© 1944, 1945, 1955 by The

New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission); Diana
Oakeley for No. 17; Observer News Service for No. 132;
George D.Painter for No. 104; ‘Partisan Review’ for No.
101 (Copyright 1947 by Partisan Review, Inc.); A.D. Peters
& Co. Ltd for Nos 29, 58, 71 vi, 74, and 76 (reprinted by
permission of A.D.Peters & Co. Ltd); ‘Poetry’ and Alta
Fisch Sutton for No. 7 (Copyright 1931 by The Modern
Poetry Association); ‘Poetry’ and A.D.Peters & Co. Ltd for
No. 55 (Copyright 1937 by The Modern Poetry Association);
‘Poetry’ and Adam Yarmolinsky for No. 86 (Copyright 1941
by The Modern Poetry Association); Hugh Gordon Porteus for
No. 19; Dilys Powell for Nos 3 and 52; Frederic Prokosch
for No. 71 iii; Alan Pryce-Jones for No. 10; Michael
Sayers for No. 31; ‘Shenandoah’ and Donald Davie for No.
111 (Copyright 1955 by Washington and Lee University,
reprinted from ‘Shenandoah’: The Washington and Lee
University Review with the permission of the Editor); Enid
Slater for No. 40; The Society of Authors as the literary
representative of the Estate of John Masefield for No. 71
x; ‘Spectator’ for Nos 16, 43, 112, 119, and 127;
‘Spectator’ and Janet Adam Smith for No. 81; ‘Spectator’
and Philip Larkin for No. 115; ‘Spectator’ and the late
Ian Parsons for No. 38; ‘Spectator’ and David Higham
Associates for Nos 71 ix and 87 (Copyright the Herbert
Read Discretionary Trust); Stephen Spender for Nos 13, 23,
46, 49, 66, and 94; ‘Sunday Times’ for No. 92; Julian
Symons for No. 75; Helen Tate for No. 71 vii; ‘Times
Literary Supplement’ for Nos 6, 11, 62, 107, 121, and 130;
Robert Penn Warren for No. 22, from ‘American Review’
(Copyright 1934 by Robert Penn Warren); the Wyndham Lewis

Memorial Trust, John Calder (Publishers) Ltd, and
University of California Press for No. 48 (© Estate of the
late Mrs G.A.Wyndham Lewis); ‘The Yale Review’ for Nos 117
and 128 (Copyright Yale University).


Note on the Selection
and Text

This anthology gathers together a selection of the first
reviews and essays covering the volumes of poetry by Auden
published between 1930 and 1976. The terminus date allows
for the inclusion of selected reviews of ‘Collected Poems’
(1976), but not of ‘The English Auden: Poems, Essays and
Dramatic Writings 1927–1939’ (1977). The latter collection
takes Auden’s career full circle, so to speak, and
invaluably reprints those works which were reviewed on
their first appearance in the 1930s, as rehearsed in the
present anthology.
Limitations of space and expense have determined the
fact that reviews of Auden’s own volumes of criticism are
not represented here.
Quotations from Auden’s works follow the original
editions, and typographical errors have been silently
corrected whenever necessary.

xix

Introduction

W.H.Auden paid little heed to reviews of his work, and
evidently felt little respect for his reviewers (with
exceptions including Geoffrey Grigson and Edmund Wilson
whom he admired). (1) While his friend Rex Warner recalls,
‘As a poet he belonged to an “irritabile genus”, but
enjoyed praise as much as anyone’, (2) Auden’s unconcern
for, and indeed unconsciousness of, his critical reception
is confirmed by many of his other close friends—Lincoln
Kirstein, William Coldstream, Stephen Spender, Janet Adam
Smith, James Stern, Jason Epstein (Editorial Director of
Random House, his American publisher), and Dr. John B.
Auden, his brother (3)—none of whom has any recollection
of him expressing reactions to published criticisms. ‘You
must remember that critics write for the public, not for
me, ‘he told interviewers late in life. ‘I don’t read
them, and often I don’t know what they say about me. You
see, most critics write on the basis of reading, not from
any experience of writing. I’ve no use for such
criticism.’ (4) In their contributions to ‘W.H.Auden: A
Tribute’, edited by Stephen Spender (1975), Golo Mann,
Ursula Niebuhr, with whom he loved to talk theology
(‘theology was his chess’, as Lincoln Kirstein aptly
remembers) (5), and Louis Kronenberger have likewise
testified to his self-confidence and pride, (6) and to
what V.S.Yanovsky has elsewhere described as ‘his genuine
distaste for reviews and books about him’: (7)
He was truly unhappy when forced to listen to people
expressing at length an opinion about his work

(‘Usually they praise you for the wrong reasons’). And
he did not take kindly to any criticism. What he liked,
after having given us a new poem to read, was a simple
‘Good, very good. It’s fun!’ Then he would nod,
completely satisfied—or so it seemed. (During the last

1


2 Introduction
years, the critics were often hostile to him, donkeys
kicking or trying to kick the aging lion.)… He knew his
value and did not need much support from the outside.
Auden’s self-assurance began early. Even while up at
Oxford in the later 1920s, he pronounced to Christopher
Isherwood that ‘Poetry must be classic, clinical and
austere’. (8) That sort of sureness prevailed throughout
his career, as Stephen Spender recalls: ‘I do not think
Auden had the kind of underlying sense of insecurity about
his own work, which makes most authors, openly or
secretly, extremely sensitive to criticism.’ (9) It was
Spender who first published a wee limited volume of
Auden’s poems which has inevitably become the most coveted
bibliographical item in his canon. (10) Auden’s poetry
only became visible to the public at large, however, with
the publication of ‘Paid on Both Sides: A Charade’ in the
‘Criterion’, (11) the periodical T.S.Eliot founded in the
conviction that there existed an international fraternity
of men of letters. (12) Then came ‘Poems’ (1930), a rather
plain two-and-sixpenny paperback which at least one

reviewer thought perhaps symptomatic of a general lowering
of standards consequent on trade depression. ‘Poems’
brought together ‘Paid on Both Sides’ and thirty austerely
unnumbered poems. Christopher Isherwood had drawn Auden’s
attention to the curious relatedness of their preparatory
school slang and the idiom of the Icelandic sagas that
Auden loved, with the result that ‘soon after this,
[Wystan] produced a short verse play in which the two
worlds are so confused that it is almost impossible to say
whether the characters are epic heroes or members of a
school O.T.C.’ (13).
The periodical publication of this play, ‘Paid on Both
Sides’, had not gone unobserved: it provided William
Empson with the opportunity to exercise his critical
skills in an article concluding that the charade ‘has the
sort of completeness that makes a work seem to define the
attitude of a generation’ (No. 1). In turn, F.R.Leavis
used Empson’s essay as a stalking-horse to subvert what he
considered ‘an essential uncertainty of purpose and of
self…’.

THE YOUNG PROPHET
Naomi Mitchison, who had been introduced to Auden’s poetry
by his Oxford contemporary Richard Goodman, tried to give
the lead to favourable criticism by publishing her review
of ‘Poems’—significantly entitled The New Generation (No.
2)—well before others. (14) Although she also proselytized


Introduction

3

for Auden among her fellow critics, she could not help but
set a pattern of ambiguous affirmation:
Reading Auden’s ‘Poems’ I am puzzled and excited. The
very young, it seems, admire and imitate him. Dare I
spot him as a winner? He is wantonly obscure sometimes.
The ‘Charade’ which opens the book is curiously
impressive…. But there are passages in the middle which
seem as if they could only be understood by a
psychoanalyst.
Auden responded to her review,
‘Thanks awfully for your letter and the very kind
review. Any reviewer who tells people to buy the book
has said the right thing.
I don’t honestly think that psycho-analytic knowledge
would help critics of ‘Paid on Both Sides’—at any rate
emotionally,
adding in a postscript, ‘The Listener Book Chronicle says:
“As for Mr Auden we dare not even hazard a guess what his
book is all about.” Am I really so obscure. Obscurity is a
bad fault.’ (15) Naomi Mitchison also gave her assent to
aspects of the poems which Auden later considered wryly:
‘They may be romantic, may be obscure, but they have the
curious, archaic maleness which seems to me to fit in with
three things: the fifth century before Plato came and
muddled it, the heroic age in Iceland, and the modern
youth movement in Germany.’ (Auden came to mistrust and
quarrel with certain of his early works—especially his

seminal volume ‘The Orators’, for its dubious and possibly
fascist affiliations.) (16)
The Cambridge periodical ‘Granta’ (28 November 1930)
followed Mrs Mitchison’s lead by hailing Auden’s poems as
a major break with forebears in an article headed The New
Gang:
The pretty imagery of the Georgians does not hold their
poetry together; the symbolism of Lawrence or Mr.
Eliot, however applicable it may be to our age in
general, remains, after all, a personal symbolism, and
the symbolism of a generation now middle-aged. Part of
the satisfaction, then, to be got from reading Mr.
Auden’s poems…is derived from the completeness, and
hence the realness of his picture….
‘Death of the old gang’ is very positively required
throughout the poems; not a mere retreatism….


4 Introduction
Both Dilys Powell (No. 3), even though she registered
excitement about ‘Poems’, and Dudley Fitts echoed Naomi
Mitchison’s comments on obscurity. Fitts in particular
found himself baffled and irritated by verses that could
reduce themselves to ‘a prosaic iteration of
incoherencies’ (No. 8).
In his autobiography ‘World Within World’ (1951),
Stephen Spender emphasizes Auden’s posture of detachment
and clinicality in his early poems, and their arbitrary
qualities. (17) That feature of clinical detachment first
won most praise from Louis MacNeice in ‘Oxford Outlook’

(No. 5), while Auden’s putative intellectual arbitrariness
(which seems curiously at odds with intellectual
clearsightedness) earned severe comment from F.R.Leavis
(No. 6).
Again, Spender’s autobiography categorically states
that Auden ‘rejected, quietly and without fuss, the moral
views of both his preceptors and his fellow
undergraduates’, (18) and yet that picture of the
renegade or revolutionary youth Auden himself blandly
disavowed in a late interview published after his death:
‘I accepted my parents’ values implicitly…. I don’t feel
misplaced. All my interests followed from a secure root.’
(19) What appears to be a late recension on Auden’s part
in no way tallies, however, with the evidence available
to Michael Roberts in December 1930—‘Mr. Auden laments
virtues once purposeful, necessary to life, now revered
as decorations, accomplishments, independent and
meaningless Virtues…’ (No. 4)—and should perhaps be
attributed to Auden’s continuing process of changing his
views which so many critics intolerantly remarked in the
years after 1940. Even on its own terms, however, ‘Poems’
does show some disconnection between sensibility and
technique, an aspect which the ‘TLS’ shrewdly remarked,
and which F.R.Leavis later perceived in terms of Auden’s
‘blend of surface poise and fundamental self-mistrust’.
Leavis alerted his readers to what he saw as Auden’s
‘profound inner disturbance…a tension of impulsive life
too urgent and shifting to permit him the sense of
intellectual mastery’.
In sum, while favourable critics thrilled to the new

poet’s classicism, his detached clinicality of manner, and
his introduction into verse of contemporary, possibly
sinister and subversive, symbols and subjects—
disintegrating industrialism, climbing, exploring, spying,
plotting—others saw the elements of arbitrariness in his
work as aspects of an artistic vision lacking in
definition and coherence. The consensus of positive
criticism at least greeted Auden as the harbinger of a
long-awaited poetry which might surmount the unsatisfying