{"product_id":"the-complete-works-of-w-h-auden-prose-volume-ii-9780691089355","title":"The Complete Works of W. H. Auden Prose Volume II","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eW H Auden's first ten years in the United States were marked by rapid and extensive change in his life and thought. He became an American citizen, fell in love with Chester Kallman, and began to reflect on American culture. This volume contains prose that Auden wrote during these years, including essays and reviews he published under pseudonyms.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"For anyone interested in 'early Auden' this book is indispensable.\"--Bernard Knox, New York Review of Books \"We need Auden again, sacred and profane. As the New Age lunges into the volcano, we could do worse than read the Auden of the '30s, if only to prepare us to understand, and value, the later Audens ... The Complete Works, edited with elegant scruple by Auden's literary executor Edward Mendelson is ... the only way to get at Auden as he happened, year by year, bit by bit, and not as he, or his later biographers, want us to think of him.\"--Tom D'Evelyn, Boston Book Review \"Before famously (and more or less permanently) emigrating to New York in 1939, W. H. Auden was not only the foremost English poet of his generation but also a prolific reviewer and essayist whose tastes and political sensibilities dominated the anti-fascist England of the 1930s... This essential volume in a projected complete edition restores the voracious reader and never pedantic critic to the master poet.\"--Publisher's Weekly \"The collection, which can be dipped into as well as read as a whole, is a feast of language and insight, and a brilliant, if indirect, cultural history of the World War II period as well as an often prophetic look at our own.\"--Arthur Kirsch, Washington Post Book World \"To have found and contextualized the material collected in this second volume of Auden's prose is a magnificent achievement, and Edward Mendelson's immaculately handled edition will be a scholarly resource of a permanent kind.\"--Peter MacDonald, Times Literary Supplement \"At last, we have a big book in which we can step into the quarry of ideas, good and bad, from which [Auden] mined [his] poems... The essays are overwhelming in the number and variety of the subjects addressed, ideas aired, capital letters employed, and systems invented to prove a small point... The essays are also a reminder of how many more places a poet could work out his worries in public fifty years ago... If he sometimes sounds in the forties as if he were speaking to us from a very high soapbox in a very big square, well, listen: we can hear him, still.\"--Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker \"To read a mere decade's worth of Auden's essays, reviews, articles and miscellaneous musings is to be reminded that the best English poet of the 20th century was one of its brightest commentators. His range of interests was incomparably wide, his manner generally clear and always insightful, his curiosity unflagging.\"--Glyn Maxwell, The Guardian \"Auden's range of topics is impressively, even dizzyingly broad... Auden did not sacrifice depth; numerous pieces are reflective, analytic, and otherwise carefully developed, and few of the pieces seem dated... Like its predecessors, the book is the model of an intelligently edited compilation.\"--Choice \"Auden displays the capacious intellect, wide-ranging sympathies, and unfaltering brilliance that make him one of the most admired writers of the 20th century. Mendelson's meticulously edited collection will be a delight for all who relish the work of this massive, mid-century mind.\"--Virginia Quarterly Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePreface ix  Acknowledgements xi  Introduction xiii  The Text of This Edition xxxiii  ESSAYS AND REVIEWS, 939-948  The Public v. the Late Mr William Butler Yeats 3  A Great Democrat 8  Whitman and Arnold 11  Christian on the Left 13  Effective Democracy 15  How Not to Be a Genius 18  Young British Writers--On the Way Up (by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood) 21  Rilke in English 25  Democracy Is Hard 27  The Dyer's Hand 29  Heretics 32  Louis MacNeice 35  Inside China 35  Jacob and the Angel 37  Poet and Politician 39  A Literary Transference 42  The Icon and the Portrait 49  Tradition and Value 51  Against Romanticism 53  The Double Focus: Sandburg's Lincoln 55  Empirics for the Million 57  A Review of How to Read a Book, by Mortimer J.Adler 59  Yeats: Master of Diction 61  Romantic or Free? 63  \"What Is Culture?\" 72  Poet in Wartime 73  Open Letter to Knut Hamsun 76  Mimesis and Allegory 78  Who Shall Plan the Planners? 88  Criticism in a Mass Society 90  A Note on Order 100  Symposium [on the role of intellectuals in political affairs ]104  Where Are We Now? 104  Tract for the Times 108  The Wandering Jew 110  All about Ida 114  James Joyce and Richard Wagner 115  Yale Daily News Banquet Address 119  A Review of Open House, by Theodore Roethke 125  The Masses Defined 127  Opera on an American Legend 129  The Means of Grace 131  Ambiguous Answers 134  Eros and Agape 137  A Grammar of Assent 141  Last Words 143  La Trahison d'un Clerc 148  W. H. Auden Speaks of Poetry and Total War 152  The Rewards of Patience 153  The Fabian Figaro 158  Lecture Notes [I] 161  Lecture Notes [II] 163  Lecture Notes [III] 165  Lecture Notes [IV] 168  Lecture Notes [V] 170  An Unbiased Biography of Yeats and His World 173  Vocation and Society 175  Auden Calls \"Night\" Fun but Not Art 183  Purely Subjective 184  The Poet of the Encirclement 198  Introduction to A Selection from the Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson 203  Student Government-or Bombs? 212  A Preface to Kierkegaard 213  A Knight of the Infinite 218  In Poor Shape 221  Children of Abraham 224  Augustus to Augustine 226  William Shakespeare, in a Wartime Format 231  Beauty Is Everlasting 234  The Giving of Thanks 236  Agee on Films 239  In Praise of the Brothers Grimm 239  Henry James and the Dedicated 242  Foghorn Bellow, Sly Bitchery, Spark Shakespeare's Worst Play 244  Foreword to The Flower of Grass, by Emile Cammaerts 246  Mr Welch 251  A Toast 253  Concerning the Village of Gschaid, and Its Mountain 254  The Day-by-Day Jottings of Piotr Tchaikovsky 256  The Christian Tragic Hero 258  The Guilty Vicarage 261  Introduction to The American Scene, by Henry James 270  K's Quest 282  As Hateful Ares Bids 286  Mozart and the Middlebrow 290  Red Lizards and White Stallions 292  Foreword to Poems, by Joan Murray 295  Address on Henry James 296  Introduction to Slick but Not Streamlined, by John Betjeman 303  Introduction to Intimate Journals, by Charles Baudelaire 307  Old Formulae in a New Light 315  Some Notes on D. H. Lawrence 317  The Essence of Dante 322  The Mythical Sex 325  Foreword to A Beginning, by Robert Horan 332  I Like It Cold 334  Mystic-and Prophet 337  Squares and Oblongs 339  Philosophy with Courage and Imagination 351  Introduction to The Portable Greek Reader 354  The Ironic Hero 377  Yeats as an Example 384  Introduction to Tales of Grimm and Andersen 390  The Poet's Life-and His Work 398  Opera Addict 400  Foreword to The Grasshopper's Man, by Rosalie Moore 403  APPENDICES  I \"The Prolific and the Devourer\" 409  II Auden as Anthologist and Editor 459  III Courses, Syllabi, Examinations, and a Curriculum 464  IV Reported Lectures 481  V Endorsements, a Commissioned Text, and a List 498  VI Auden on the Air 501  VII Lost and Unwritten Work 506  TEXTUAL NOTES  Essays and Reviews, 1939-948 511  Index of Titles, First Lines, and Books Reviewed 553","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49403718631767,"sku":"9780691089355","price":73.6,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780691089355.jpg?v=1730484345","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-complete-works-of-w-h-auden-prose-volume-ii-9780691089355","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}