Auden

W. H. Auden was the greatest English poet of the twentieth century. As witness to many of the century's pivotal moments - Berlin in the 1920s, Spain and China in the 1930s, wartime and postwar America - and because of his consuming quest to translate the social, political, and cultural upheavals into poetry, his importance at century's end is undeniable. It is Richard Davenport-Hines' achievement in this biography (the first in fifteen years) to make clear the extent of Auden's achievement - as a poet, a librettist, and an essayist - and to show how his works serve as a commentary on the w...