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1907-1973
Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York but his father, Dr. George Auden, a general medical practitioner, soon took up the post of School Medical Officer for Birmingham and Professor of Public Health at Birmingham University. The family moved to Solihull in 1909, to what was then a village to the south of the city. Wystan retained vivid memories of the area and recalled the journey from Birmingham to Wolverhampton on the train in the poem Letter to Lord Byron.
The rather unusual Christian name was apparently derived from the fact that his father was born in Repton, Derbyshire, where the bones of St. Wystan were deposited in the Abbey before being taken to Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. The story is that in the ninth century, Wystan, grandson of the King of Mercia, was killed by his uncle and the site of the treachery was marked by a beam of light from the heavens. The place was thereafter called Winstanstow and it lies close to the village of Wistanswick, near Craven Arms, Shropshire. The story is related in an archaeological and historical guide to Shropshire published in 1912 by a certain John Ernest Auden, Wystan's uncle.
From the age of eight Wystan was sent to board at a school in Surrey, where he met Christopher Isherwood, and from the age of 13 he went on to Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk. After receiving a degree from Oxford University in 1928 Auden lived in Berlin before commencing a teaching career which was to occupy him for five years.
For three of these, from the Autumn of 1932, he was at the Downs School, Colwall, near Great Malvern. Auden entered fully into the happy atmosphere of the school and the Malvern Hills influenced his work:-
Here on the cropped grass of the narrow ridge I stand,
A fathom of earth, alive in air,
Aloof as an admiral on the old rocks
England below me.
The Malvern Hills are the final resting place of Piers Plowman, the dreamer from the poem by William Langland, and Auden was known to quote from the poem whilst out walking them. He also experimented with styles derived from Middle English verse.
In June 1935 he suddenly married a daughter of Thomas Mann, but this was a marriage of convenience to bestow British citizenship upon Erika Mann. The ceremony took place at the Registry Office in Ledbury. At this time he contributed to a short film called The coal face, along with a young musician by the name of Benjamin Britten, and this led Auden to leave teaching for a new career in films before travelling widely. He subsequently emigrated to America in 1939 with Christopher Isherwood. After the war he lived for periods in Italy and Austria and took up the post as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford from 1956 to 1961.
His first collection of poems was published in 1930 and it through his passion and expression of resentment of social issues, war and unemployment that he built and retained his reputation. His early pro-Marxist ideals were to be replaced by Christian ideals later in his life and he attempted to revise his early work in-line with his new beliefs. The English Auden (1977) restored these works to their original form. In addition to poetry, Auden tackled drama, collaborating with Isherwood on three plays, including The ascent of F6 (1936).
Although Auden lived for many years in various parts of the West Midlands, his heart was in the North of England. In a magazine article published in 1947 he wrote:-
Crewe Junction marks the wildly exciting frontier where the alien South ends and the North, my world, begins.
He was fascinated by the landscape and especially the lead mining industry, which inspired many of his best works.
The following works are available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
Another time (1940)
The ascent of F6 (1936)
Collected poems (1976)
Collected shorter poems 1930-1944 (1950)
The English Auden (1977)
The following works are available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
W H Auden: a biography by Humphrey Carpenter
(1981)
Language of modern poetry: Yeats, Eliot, Auden by Astley
Cooper Partridge (1976)
The Literary Encyclopedia has a profile of W.H. Auden by Michael O'Neill, University of Durham.
Alan Myers has researched Auden's northern roots and influences for the Centre for Northern Studies, Northumbria University, including a Literary Guide to North-East England.
W.H. Auden; the life of a poet by Charles Osborne (1980).
Page created 2 September 2001 and last
updated 6 April 2005.
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