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Criticism


Selected Critical and Biographical Studies of W. H. Auden

General introductory studies and brief lives
Comprehensive biographical and critical studies
Studies of various aspects of Auden's life and work
The Auden Studies series
Bibliographies, catalogues, and concordances


This is a partial and selective list of books about Auden's work and life, with a slight emphasis on recent and currently available titles. Other recent and forthcoming books are listed on this site's news page. Many of these books may be ordered by clicking on the links below, which lead to the web sites of on-line booksellers. American readers may prefer to order from Amazon.com; European readers may prefer its British counterpart, Amazon.co.uk.

When you begin the process of ordering a book by clicking on a link between this site and one of the branches of Amazon.com, the Society receives a small percentage of the purchase price; these payments are used to help defray the cost of printing and mailing the Society's Newsletter. There is no difference in the selling price of the book if you begin the order on this site or if you begin it directly from an Amazon.com web site. Further information on this arrangement (which does not apply to links to other booksellers) is available on the Amazon.com sites.

General introductory studies and brief lives

Tony Sharpe. W. H. Auden. London and New York: Routledge, 2007 (Routledge Guides to Literature); ISBN 978-0415327367 (paper), 978-0415327350 (cloth). (Order from Amazon.com or Amazon UK.)

Stan Smith. W. H. Auden. Plymouth: Northcote House, in association with the British Council, 1997 (Writers and Their Work); ISBN 0-7463-0736-5. Distributed in the U.S. by the University Press of Mississippi. (Order from Amazon.com or Amazon UK.)

George T. Wright. W. H. Auden. Revised edition. Boston: Twayne, 1981. This book is out of print but widely available in libraries.

Thekla Clark. Wystan and Chester: A Personal Memoir of W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman. London: Faber, 1995; New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. (Order from Amazon.com; paperback reprints are available from Amazon UK or Amazon.com.)

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Comprehensive biographical and critical studies

Humphrey Carpenter. W. H. Auden: A Biography. London: George Allen & Unwin; New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. (Out of print; copies may sometimes be obtained through Amazon.com.)

Richard Davenport-Hines. Auden, London: Heinemann, 1995; New York: Pantheon, 1996. (Paperback reprints may be ordered from Amazon UK and Amazon.com.)

John Fuller. W. H. Auden: A Commentary. London: Faber & Faber, 1998; ISBN 0-571-19268-8. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. (Completely rewritten and greatly expanded from the same author's A Reader's Guide to W. H. Auden. (Order from Amazon.com or Amazon UK; a corrected paperback reprint was published in October 2000; order from Amazon.com).

Edward Mendelson. Early Auden. New York: Viking; London: Faber & Faber, 1981. (Corrected paperback editions were published by Faber in 1999 and Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2000; order from Amazon.com or Amazon UK.)

Edward Mendelson. Later Auden. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux; London: Faber & Faber, 1999. (Order from Amazon.com or Amazon UK. A corrected paperback edition was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2000; order from Amazon.com)

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Studies of various aspects of Auden's life and work

W. H. Auden in Context, edited by Tony Sharpe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Order from Cambridge University Press at a twenty-percent discount.

The Poetry of W. H. Auden: a reader's guide to essential criticism, edited by Paul Hendon. Cambridge: Icon Books, 2000. Order from Amazon UK.)

Marsha Bryant. Auden and Documentary in the 1930s. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997. (Order from Amazon.com.)

Rainer Emig. W. H. Auden: Towards a Postmodern Poetics. London: Macmillan, 1999. (Order from Amazon.com.)

Alan Jacobs. What Became of Wystan: Change and Continuity in Auden's Poetry. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998. (Order from Amazon.com.)

Arthur Kirsch. Auden and Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. (Order from Amazon.com.)

Donald Mitchell. Britten and Auden in the Thirties: The Year 1936. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2000 (reprint of 1981 edition). (Order from Amazon.com or Amazon UK.)

Alan Myers and Robert Forsythe. W. H. Auden: Pennine Poet. Nenthead: North Pennines Heritage Trust, 1999. (Order from Amazon UK, or by e-mail from North Pennines Heritage Trust, or write to the Trust at Nenthead Mines Heritage Centre, Nenthead, Alston, Cumbria, CA9 3PD, UK; phone 01434 382037.) Contains two papers: "W. H. Auden and the North" by Alan Myers, and "Auden's Pennine Names" by Robert Forsythe. The latter paper is an analysis of the place names from the area as used in Auden's work, with Ordnance Survey map references and a map showing many of the names.

Norman Page. Auden and Isherwood: The Berlin Years. London: Macmillan, October 1998; paperback, March 2002. New York: St. Martin's Press, October 1998; paperback, March 2000. (Order from Amazon.com or Amazon UK.)

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The Auden Studies series

The Map of All My Youth: Early Works, Friends and Influences, ed. Katherine Bucknell and Nicholas Jenkins. (Auden Studies 1.) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. (Order from Amazon.com.)

The Language of Learning and the Language of Love: Uncollected Writing, New Interpretations, ed. Katherine Bucknell and Nicholas Jenkins. (Auden Studies 2). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. (Order from Amazon.com.)

In Solitude, for Company: W. H. Auden After 1940: Unpublished Prose and Recent Criticism, ed. Katherine Bucknell and Nicholas Jenkins. (Auden Studies 3). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. (Order from Amazon.com.)

Further volumes in this series are forthcoming.

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Bibliographies, catalogues, and concordances

B. C. Bloomfield and Edward Mendelson. W. H. Auden: A Bibliography 1924-1969, second edition. University Press of Virginia, 1973. (Out of print; copies may sometimes be obtained through Amazon.com.)

W. H. Auden, 1907-1973: An Exhibition from the Berg Collection, by Edward Mendelson. New York: The New York Public Library, 1980. (Order from Amazon.com.) The illustrated catalogue of an exhibition of books, manuscripts, and photographs.

Dean Edward Dowling. A Concordance to the Poetry of W. H. Auden. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1972. Covers Auden's Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957, Collected Longer Poems, Homage to Clio, About the House, City without Walls, Academic Graffiti, and Epistle to a Godson. (Order from UMI/Proquest; in the search form, enter UMI order number 7311609.)

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