{"title":"Books by W.H. Auden","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780571087358","title":"Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957","description":"\u003cp\u003eW. H. Auden was once described as the Picasso of modern poetry - a tribute to his ceaseless experimentation with form and subject matter.  Beginning with Anglo-Saxon poetry and ending with an Horatian expansiveness and conversational sweep, this volume is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in modern poetry after T. S. Eliot.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn his lifetime a controversial, outspoken, yet enigmatic, writer, Auden has gradually come to seem an intimate poet, as we have learned to read him correctly.  This volume is the best possible introduction to his consummate craftsmanship and his unparalleled originality which made him the master-poet of his generation.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201785102514,"sku":"9780571087358","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571087358.jpg?v=1786014192"},{"product_id":"9780571351152","title":"Another Time","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnother Time\u003c\/i\u003e was the first volume that Auden published after his departure to America with Christopher Isherwood in January 1939. It was dedicated to Chester Kallman. The poems, some of which date from the early thirties, are about people, places and the intellectual climate of the times, and they show greater variety of tone and technique than in any previous book of Auden's. Some of his most famous and often quoted (or misquoted) lines appear in their original form, including the text of two poems in particular - 'Spain 1937' and 'September 1,1939' - that he later altered or repudiated.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'[He] has made himself into a kind of unofficial poet laureate. If I am bombed I hope he will write a few sapphics about me.' Stephen Spender, 1941\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57688229151093,"sku":"9780571234370","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":43201804107954,"sku":"9780571351152","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571234370.jpg?v=1792686168"},{"product_id":"9780571396825","title":"Stop All the Clocks","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eStop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePrevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eW. H. Auden was the consummate poet of love and heartbreak. \u003ci\u003eStop All the Clocks\u003c\/i\u003e presents a selection of his best known, most lucid poems, poems that pitch human frailty against a persisting desire for love and belonging. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere are the anxieties that beset our waking and sleeping hours: the delirium of desire, the torture of unrequited love, the trauma of loss and displacement. And here, in these resonant, dazzling poems, is the understanding we might be looking for.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'W. H. Auden had the greatest gifts of any of our poets in the twentieth century.' James Fenton, \u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55896342004085,"sku":"9780571396825","price":10.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571396825_e77115f6-519e-4b39-900a-66d9c97d8b44.jpg?v=1786014743"},{"product_id":"9780571226719","title":"W. H. Auden","description":"W. H. Auden was born in York in 1907. His first full-length collection, Poems, was published by T. S. Eliot at Faber and Faber in 1930. The many volumes he published thereafter included poetry, plays, essays and libretti, and his ceaseless experimentation, consummate craftsmanship and originality established him as one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century. He died in 1973.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56291548725621,"sku":"9780571226719","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571226719_b558d07f-9dd1-4bd2-a91e-0bd4bc6ca1db.jpg?v=1786013713"},{"product_id":"9780571283491","title":"Collected Longer Poems","description":"First published in 1968, this companion volume to the\u003ci\u003e Collected Shorter Poems \u003c\/i\u003ewas  compiled by W.H. Auden to bring together six of his longer poetic  works, originally published between 1930 and 1947. Auden was one of the  modern masters of the extended poem, and these works are among his most  enduring achievements, both for their technical virtuosity and for the  emotional and intellectual precision with which they dissected the  malaise and turmoil of their age.\u003ci\u003eCollected Longer Poems \u003c\/i\u003eincludes \u003ci\u003ePaid on Both Sides\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eLetter to Lord Byron\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eFor the Time Being\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Sea and the Mirror\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Age of Anxiety.\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56292618043765,"sku":"9780571283491","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571283491_2c4b94ba-9c23-4349-8701-0313113f26e8.jpg?v=1786014502"},{"product_id":"9780571283514","title":"Poems (1930)","description":"\u003cp\u003eAuden's electrifying, enigmatic and extraordinarily influential debut collection was published by Faber in 1930, and simply entitled\u003ci\u003e Poems\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor the second edition (1933) he omitted seven items and added new poems in their place.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAvailable again for the first time since 1950, this reissue follows the text of the second edition.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56292618076533,"sku":"9780571283514","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571283514_13c088c8-8b1e-41e1-85f9-ed331c56b9c4.jpg?v=1786014504"},{"product_id":"9780571283538","title":"The Orators","description":"When \u003ci\u003eThe Orators \u003c\/i\u003ewas originally published in 1932 it was described by \u003ci\u003ePoetry Review \u003c\/i\u003eas 'something as important as the appearance of Mr Eliot's poems fifteen years ago'. A long poem written in both prose and verse, it was a powerful addition to the canon of modernist poetry.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56292618109301,"sku":"9780571283538","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571283538_0e50faf3-86f2-4cf3-b844-a4e42a34087b.jpg?v=1786014505"},{"product_id":"9780571283507","title":"The Dyer's Hand","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn  the early 1950s Auden began planning a prose volume that would bring  together some of his published essays, lectures, and reviews, together  with newly-written notes and aphorisms. In 1956 he was elected Professor  of Poetry at Oxford, and The Dyer's Hand appeared in 1962, combining  earlier material with revised versions of many of his Oxford lectures:  The result is one of Auden's most original works, his only  book of prose devised as a single cohesive work about disparate  subjects, and containing - as he remarked at the time - 'all the  autobiography I am willing to make public'.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Speaking for myself,  the questions which interest me most when reading a poem are two. The  first is technical: \"Here is a verbal contraption. How does it work?\"  The second is, in the broadest sense, moral: \"What kind of a guy  inhabits this poem? What is his notion of the good life or the good  place? His notion of the Evil One? What does he conceal from the reader?  What does he conceal even from himself?\" - W. H. Auden (inaugural  lecture as Professor of Poetry at Oxford, June 1956)\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56292632199541,"sku":"9780571283507","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571283507_61419d32-d663-4a29-beaa-838431302357.jpg?v=1786014503"},{"product_id":"9780691138152","title":"The Age of Anxiety – A Baroque Eclogue","description":"When it was first published in 1947, The Age of Anxiety--W. H. Auden's last, longest, and most ambitious book-length poem--immediately struck a powerful chord, capturing the imagination of the cultural moment that it diagnosed and named. Beginning as a conversation among four strangers in a barroom on New York's Third Avenue, Auden's analysis of Western culture during the Second World War won the Pulitzer Prize and inspired a symphony by Leonard Bernstein as well as a ballet by Jerome Robbins. Yet reviews of the poem were sharply divided, and today, despite its continuing fame, it is unjustly neglected by readers. This volume--the first annotated, critical edition of the poem--introduces this important work to a new generation of readers by putting it in historical and biographical context and elucidating its difficulties. Alan Jacobs's introduction and thorough annotations help today's readers understand and appreciate the full richness of a poem that contains some of Auden's most powerful and beautiful verse, and that still deserves a central place in the canon of twentieth-century poetry.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56294509347189,"sku":"9780691138152","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780691138152_661894bc-e203-4c2f-a098-ffb6dae2ed23.jpg?v=1786014636"},{"product_id":"9780691218656","title":"The Shield of Achilles","description":"Back in print for the first time in decades, Auden’s National Book Award–winning poetry collection, in a critical edition that introduces it to a new generation of readersThe Shield of Achilles, which won the National Book Award in 1956, may well be W. H. Auden’s most important, intricately designed, and unified book of poetry. In addition to its famous title poem, which reimagines Achilles’s shield for the modern age, when war and heroism have changed beyond recognition, the book also includes two sequences—“Bucolics” and “Horae Canonicae”—that Auden believed to be among his most significant work. Featuring an authoritative text and an introduction and notes by Alan Jacobs, this volume brings Auden’s collection back into print for the first time in decades and offers the only critical edition of the work.   As Jacobs writes in the introduction, Auden’s collection “is the boldest and most intellectually assured work of his career, an achievement that has not been sufficiently acknowledged.” Describing the book’s formal qualities and careful structure, Jacobs shows why The Shield of Achilles should be seen as one of Auden’s most central poetic statements—a richly imaginative, beautifully envisioned account of what it means to live, as human beings do, simultaneously in nature and in history.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57685707161973,"sku":"9780691260921","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":56294796329333,"sku":"9780691218656","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780691260921_d55fd10a-bc72-444d-82f1-4291e3611e8c.jpg?v=1792598865"},{"product_id":"9780691219295","title":"The Complete Works of W. H. Auden: Poems, Volume I  – 1927–1939","description":"The first of two volumes of the eagerly anticipated first complete edition of Auden’s poems—including some that have never been published beforeW. 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.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56294798197109,"sku":"9780691219295","price":55.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780691219295_60356db3-a02a-4963-a319-303607b74b7e.jpg?v=1786014592"},{"product_id":"9780571178988","title":"As I Walked Out One Evening","description":"This highly enjoyable anthology has been chosen by Edward Mendelson, whose knowledge of Auden's writings is unrivalled. As he says in his introduction, these 'lighter verses' (some of them previously unpublished) share the intelligence, energy, skill, humour and wisdom that find their fullest expression in Auden's major poems.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311802102133,"sku":"9780571178988","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571178988_afb515e1-eab4-4ea5-8521-619436b31bdd.jpg?v=1786013431"},{"product_id":"letters-from-iceland","title":"Letters from Iceland","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn the summer of 1936, W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice visited Iceland on commission to write a travel book, but found themselves capturing concerns on a scale that were far more international.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'Though writing in a \"holiday\" spirit,' commented Auden, 'its authors were all the time conscious of a threatening horizon to their picnic - world-wide unemployment, Hitler growing everyday more powerful and a world-war more inevitable.'\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe result is the remarkable \u003ci\u003eLetters from Iceland\u003c\/i\u003e, a collaboration in poetry and prose, reportage and correspondence, published in 1937 with the Spanish Civil War newly in progress, beneath the shadow of looming world war.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57481416999285,"sku":"9780571283521","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571283521.jpg?v=1786089676"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-wh-auden.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}