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Criticism
Selected Critical and Biographical Studies of W.H.Auden
Generalintroductory studies and brief lives
Comprehensivebiographical and critical studies
Studies of various aspectsof Auden's life and work
The Auden Studiesseries
Bibliographies,catalogues, andconcordances
This is a partial and selective list of books about Auden'swork and life, with a slight emphasis on recent and currentlyavailable titles. Other recent and forthcoming books arelisted on this site's news page. Many of these books may beordered by clicking on the links below, which lead to the websites of on-line booksellers. American readers may prefer toorder from Amazon.com; European readers may prefer its British counterpart,Amazon.co.uk.
When you begin the process of ordering a bookby clicking on a link between this site and one of the branchesof Amazon.com, the Society receives a small percentage of thepurchase price; these payments are used to help defraythe cost of printing and mailing the Society's Newsletter.There is no difference in the selling price of the bookif you begin the order on this site or if you begin itdirectly from an Amazon.com web site. Further informationon this arrangement (which does not apply to links to otherbooksellers) is available on the Amazon.com sites.
Generalintroductory 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 theU.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 butwidely 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 biographicaland critical studies
Humphrey Carpenter. W. H. Auden: ABiography. London: George Allen & Unwin; New York:Houghton Mifflin, 1981. (Out of print; copies may sometimesbe 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 editionswere 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 orAmazon 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'slife and work
The Poetry of W. H. Auden: a reader's guideto 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.)
Anthony Hecht. The Hidden Law: The Poetry of W.H. Auden. Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1993. (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 fromAmazon.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: NorthPennines Heritage Trust, 1999. (Order from Amazon UK, or by e-mail from NorthPennines Heritage Trust, or write to the Trust atNenthead 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" byRobert Forsythe. The latter paper is an analysis of the place names from the area as used in Auden's work, withOrdnance Survey map references and a map showing many of thenames.
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 andInfluences, 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 Languageof Love: Uncollected Writing, New Interpretations, ed.Katherine Bucknell and Nicholas Jenkins. (Auden Studies 2).Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. (Orderfrom 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. (Orderfrom Amazon.com.)
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Bibliographies, catalogues, andconcordances
B. C. Bloomfield and Edward Mendelson. W.H.Auden: A Bibliography 1924-1969, second edition. UniversityPress of Virginia, 1973. (Out of print; copies may sometimesbe obtained through Amazon.com.)
Supplements to Bloomfield and Mendelson are included in the three volumes in the Auden Studies series listed above.
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 ofW.H. Auden. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1972. CoversAuden's Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957, Collected LongerPoems, Homage to Clio, About the House, City without Walls, AcademicGraffiti, and Epistle to a Godson. (Order fromUMI/Proquest;in the search form, enter UMI order number 7311609.)
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