The Complete Works of W. H. Auden: Prose, Volume VI: 1969-1973

by W. H. Auden, Edward Mendelson (Editor)

Overview

The final volume of the complete prose of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers

This sixth and final volume of W. H. Auden's prose displays a great writer’s mind in its full maturity of wisdom, learning, and emotional and moral intelligence. It contains the full text of the only book that he regarded as an autobiography, A Certain World, in which he portrayed himself by selecting and commenting on writings by others that most affected him throughout his life. It also features late essays and reviews that in many cases present lightly disguised autobiographies, among them the most detailed account of his sexuality, in "Papa Was a Wise Old Sly-Boots." The appendixes gather lectures and public talks that are otherwise unpublished or unavailable.

Edward Mendelson’s comprehensive notes provide biographical and historical explanations of obscure references. The text includes corrections and revisions that Auden marked in personal copies of his work and that are published here for the first time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691164588
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	06/02/2015
Series:	The Complete Works of W. H. Auden , #6
Pages:	808
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.40(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

Edward Mendelson is the literary executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden and the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. His books include Early Auden, Later Auden, The Things That Matter, and Lives of the New York Intellectuals.

Table of Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
The Text of This Edition xiii
A CERTAIN WORLD
A Certain World 1
ESSAYS AND REVIEWS 1969–1973
Foreword to the American edition of The Pendulum, by Anthony Rossiter 341
Foreword to Persons from Porlock and Other Plays For Radio,by Louis MacNeice 344
A Civilized Voice 347
To Stephen Spender on His Sixtieth Birthday 359
Papa Was a Wise Old Sly-Boots 360
A Piece of Pure Fiction in the Firbank Mode 368
Freedom and Necessity in Poetry 370
In Defense of the Tall Story 378
Foreword to G. K. Chesterton: A Selection from His Non-Fictional Prose 384
Translation 390
Foreword to I Am an Impure Thinker, by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy 395
[A Tribute to Igor Stravinsky] 396
Concerning the Unpredictable 397
Translator’s Note [to the Icelandic "Song of Rig"] 405
A Russian Aesthete 405
Foreword to The Sorrows of Young Werther [and] Novella, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 412
Foreword to Selected Poems, by Joseph Brodsky 417
Lame Shadows 419
Robert to the Rescue 424
Portrait with a Wart or Two 434
Well Done, Sir Walter Scott! 437
[A Review of Hogarth on the High Life, by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg] 446
Foreword to Plastic Sense, by Malcolm de Chazal 446
Foreword to Austria: People and Language, by Stella Musulin 450
Foreword to Selected Poems, by Gunnar Ekelöf 453
The Artist’s Private Face 456
W. H. Auden on George Orwell 458
The Anomalous Creature 462
The Mountain Allowed Them Pride 465
He Descended into Hell in Vain 467
Craftsman, Artist, Genius 472
Louise Bogan 1897–1970 475
The Megrims 478
Too Much Mustard 482
W. H. Auden on the Young Mr Goethe 483
Foreword to Sense & Inconsequence, by Angus Stewart 486
Chester Kallman: A Voice of Importance 487
The Diary of a Diary 491
A Worcestershire Lad 495
Down with the "Melting Pot" 500
A Genius and a Gentleman 503
Telling It the Way It Was 506
I’ll Be Seeing You Again, I Hope 509
A Poet of the Actual 510
Doing Oneself In 514
Wilson’s Sabine Farm 518
To an Old Friend [Cecil Day-Lewis] 523
Introduction to The Spirit of Man: An Anthology, compiled by Robert Bridges 526
The Poet of No More 528
A Saint-Simon of Our Time 531
Other People’s Babies 536
An Odd Couple 538
A Kind of Poetic Justice 544
Evangelist of the Life Force 546
Happy Birthday, Dorothy Day 551
Marianne Moore 1887–1972 556
Preface to Selected Songs of Thomas Campion 559
Introduction to George Herbert: Selected by W. H. Auden 562
Introduction to A Choice of Dryden’s Verse 567
Foreword to Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, by E. M. Forster 571
How Can I Tell What I Think Till I See What I Say? 575
The Gift of Wonder 579
Renderings 585
An Odd Ball 588
Veni, Vici, VD 594
Larkin’s Choice 598
Rhyme and Reason 600
Between Crossfires 602
Indestructible 609
Progress Is the Mother of Problems (G. K. Chesterton) 611
Praiseworthy 618
Responses to the Near East 620
Books Which Mean Much to Me 624
A Russian with Common Sense 626
"I have a ferocious bee in my bonnet" 632
An Odd Ball in an Odd Country at an Odd Time 633
Where Are the Arts Going? 638
Death at Random 639
Some Reflections on the Arts 644
An Odd Fish 645
FOREWORDS AND AFTERWORDS
Forewords and Afterwords 655
ADDENDA TO PREVIOUS VOLUMES
Addenda to Previous Volumes 669
APPENDICES
I Auden as Anthologist and Editor 675
II Lectures and Speeches 679
III Responses to Questionnaires 724
IV Auden on the Air 726
V Endorsements 731
VI Letters to the Editor and Other Public Statements 733
VII Auden and the Liturgy 739
VIII Lost and Unwritten Work 741
TEXTUAL NOTES
A Certain World 745
Essays and Reviews 1969–1973 751
Forewords and Afterwords 774
Index of Titles and Books Reviewed 787

Editorial Reviews

"Praise for previous edition: No major writer's complete works are more fun to read."

Publishers Weekly

One of Truthdig’s 2015 Books of the Year

"Stupendous collections. . . . [The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose] is becoming one of the great achievements of current literary scholarship."—-Fintan O'Toole, New York Review of Books

"Wholly exemplary. . . . Edward Mendelson deserves gratitude and unmitigated praise."—-Seamus Perry, Times Literary Supplement

"No one could take [Auden] for anything less than an extremely accomplished, fluent, professional writer . . . As an editor, Mendelson is meticulous, judicious and quite extraordinarily thorough. To say that Princeton University Press, in producing such handsome and usable volumes, has matched Mendelson's editorial standards is to give high praise indeed."—-Stefan Collini, London Review of Books

"This rich horde, beautifully produced and meticulously edited, will be my bedside reading for the rest of the year and beyond."—-David Collard, Times Literary Supplement

"Praise for previous volumes: "The articles will delight any reader with their wit, charm, and elegance."—-Charles Rosen, New York Review of Books

"Praise for previous edition: When you add in the volumes already devoted to plays, libretti, poems, it becomes hard to avoid describing the whole enterprise as heroic. In fact it could also be described as unique, for no other twentieth-century English poet has been so fully and patiently honoured."—-Frank Kermode, London Review of Books

"The fifth and sixth volumes of Auden's collected prose . . . bring to a conclusion a project that began in 1996 under the meticulous editorship of Edward Mendelson. It is hard to find superlatives adequate to the accomplishment. The successive volumes, spaced roughly by decades and each running from some 600 to over 800 pages, include lively and detailed introductions, which end up forming a kind of literary biography of Auden as essayist. . . . To add to the pleasures of editorial precision, the volumes themselves have been beautifully produced."—-Eric Ormsby, Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher