Biography of Wystan Hugh Auden

English poet, playwright, critic, and librettist Wystan Hugh Auden had a major influence on the poetry of the twentieth century. Auden was born on February 21, 1907 in York, England. Auden was born and raised in a greatly industrial section of northern England. His father, a prominent physician with an extensive knowledge of mythology, and his mother, a strict Anglican, both had strong influences on Auden’s poetry. During his child he moved to Birmingham. Auden’s early interest in science and engineering earned him a scholarship to Oxford University, where his attraction with poetry led him to change his field of study to English. His appeal to science never completely faded and scientific references are often found in his poetry. While at Oxford Auden became familiar with modernist poetry, one was T. S. Eliot. It was also at Oxford that Auden became the pivotal member of a group of writers called the “Oxford Group”, which included Stephen Spender, C. Day Lewis, and Louis MacNeice. The group adhered to various collective and anti-fascist doctrines and addressed social, political, and economic concerns in their writings. Auden pursued his love of poetry, influenced by Old English verse and the poems of Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, William Blake and Emily Dickinson. He graduated from Oxford in 1928, and that same year, his collection Poems was privately printed.

He went to live in Berlin for a year, returning to England to become a teacher. His early poetry made his reputation as a humorous and technically accomplished writer. In 1935, Auden married Erika Mann, the daughter of the German novelist Thomas Mann. It was a marriage of expediency to enable her to gain British citizenship and escape Nazi Germany. In 1930, with the help o...

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...umously published Thank You, Fog: Last Poems. His own beliefs changed drastically between his youthful career in England, when he was a passionate advocate of socialism and Freudian psychoanalysis, and his later phase in America, when his central fixation became Christianity and the theology of modern Protestant theologians. A productive writer, Auden was also a noted playwright, librettist, editor, and essayist. Generally considered the greatest English poet of the twentieth century, his work has exerted a major influence on succeeding generations of poets on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1972, with his health declining, Auden left America. He moved to live in Oxford, in a cottage belonging to his old college, Christ Church. In the late 1950s, Auden had bought a house in Austria, where he spent six months of every year. He died in Austria on 29 September 1973.