W.H. Auden Biography

Wystan Hugh Auden was born on February 21, 1907 in York, England to George Augustus Auden, a physician, and Constance Rosalie Bicknell Auden, a trained missionary nurse who never served. He became known as W.H. Auden because he signed his works with that name instead of his birth name. Auden, the youngest of three boys, found his style of writing by reading and studying English literarture in Christ Church, Oxford. In 1908, Auden and his family moved to Harborne, Birmingham because his father had been appointed the School Medical Officer and Lecturer of Public Health. It was then that Auden's lifelong interests began inside his father's library. When he was eight, Auden started to attend boarding schools and would only come home for holidays. Auden's first boarding school was St. Edmund's School, Surrey. While there, he met Christopher Isherwood, who later became a famous novelist. At the age of thirteen, he attended Gresham's School in Norfolk in 1922, where his friend Robert Medley suggested that he should write poetry. In 1923, Auden's first published poems appeared in the school magazine. In 1925, Auden went to Christ Church, Oxford with a scholarship in biology. In his second year he had switched to studying English. He left Oxford with a third-class degree in 1928. During his four years at Christ Church, Auden was reunited with Christopher Isherwood. Isherwood became Auden’s mentor. Auden would send his poems to Isherwood for comments, criticism, and feedback. They often collaborated to produce works of literature and they wrote three plays and a travel book by 1939. In the fall of 1928, Auden left Britain for nine months to go to Weimar, Berlin. Part of the reason that Auden left Britain was to rebel against the English government who tried to control people’s sexual tendencies. Auden was homosexual. When he returned to Britain in 1929, he worked briefly as a tutor. In 1930, he published his first book, Poems. After publishing his first book, Auden became a schoolmaster in two different boys' schools until 1935. From 1935 until he left Britain again in 1939, Auden worked as a reviewer, essay writer, and lecturer. He began working with the G.P.O. Film Unit, a documentary filmmaking branch of the post office. This is how he met Benjamin Britten, who he collaborated with on plays, songs, and a libretto in 1935. During the 1930s, most of his poems were inspired by love. In January of 1939, Auden and Isherwood sailed to New York. They entered on temporary visas. Many British people saw their departure as a treacherous act and Auden's reputation in Britain suffered from it. Around April of 1939, after Isherwood moved to California, Auden met Chester Kallman, a poet. They became lovers and lived with each other from 1953 until Auden’s death even though Kallman stopped the relationship in 1941. In 1941 and 1942 he taught English at the University of Michigan. He was drafted for World War II but was rejected for medical reasons. He was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a type of American grant, in 1942, but he didn't take it. Instead he chose to teach at Swarthmore College from 1942 to 1945. In 1945, after the end of World War II, Auden ventured to Germany on a trip that would inspire his work. When he returned to the United States in 1946, he became an American citizen. His life from that point was seemingly simple. He continued to work at various universities and traveled to many parts of Europe. His main source of income was lecture tours or writing for magazines. He continued this lifestyle until he died in Vienna in 1973. Auden’s work includes about 400 poems (seven long poems and two that were book-length) and over 400 essays and reviews about literature. His style was “encyclopedic in scope and method.” When he wrote, it would range from a modern feel to a traditional feel and he had various tones. His main subjects were religion, politics, and love.- BOOMTOWN

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