Auden and Isherwood: The Berlin Years

by Norman Page

Overview

Like Paris in the twenties, Berlin in the early thirties was one of the most exciting cities in the world. As the Weimar Republic sputtered to a close and war loomed on the horizon, the city was a magnet for talented writers and artists. It was in this now-vanished time and place that W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood lived, wrote and slept together. Norman Page tells the story of how these years shaped these important writers and, in doing so, illuminates a bygone era.

Author Biography: Norman Page is Emeritus Professor of English at Nottingham University in England.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333720226
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	08/17/1998
Edition description:	1998
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

NORMAN PAGE is Emeritus Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Nottingham. He has published widely on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and has lectured in many parts of the world. His previous biographies include A.E. Housman: A Critical Biography and Tennyson: An Illustrated Life.

Table of Contents

List of Plates Acknowledgements Preface to the Paperback Edition Prologue: Looking for Berlin Two Young Englishmen Berlin: Places Berlin: Faces The Other Camera: Aspects of Weimar Cinema Writing about Berlin Epilogue: Goodbye to Berlin Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

Valuable...readable book is to run the historical-cultural camera backwards...restoring the reality of what the two young Englishmen saw and did.

Washington Times

...illuminating, always informative study of the Berlin milieu in which Auden and Isherwood found themselves shortly before Hitler rose to power.

San Francisco Chronicle

The book is wide ranging, taking in topography, biography, political and social history, and literary criticism...all with stimulating and informative, and livened by humor and some nice touches of asperity.
—The Times Literary Supplement

Peter Parker

Norman Page's aims in writing this book were, as I believe, modest but very worthwhile. He intended to add to the store of information about this German chapter in British literary history. He intended that the information should be accurate, and purged of romantic and self-serving myths. Most importantly, he wanted to convience his readers that the Berlin years were artistically formative in the careers of two (and possibly three) major British writers. If these were his intentions Page has succeeded, and the proof will be the essential place which Auden and Isherwood: The Berlin Years will occupy on our shelves.' - John Sutherland The Cambridge Quarterly

'Although quite short, the book is wide-ranging, taking in topography, biography, political and social history, and literary criticism...always stimulating and informative, enlivened by humour and some nice touches of asperity'. - Peter Parker, Times Literary Supplement

'Entertaining and insightful reading, highly recommended'. - Robert Kelly, Library Journal

From the Publisher