Early Auden

Auden #1

by Edward Mendelson

Early Auden remains the most penetrating, detailed, and informative examination we have of the great work produced by the young W. H. Auden in England before the war. Edward Mendelson writes with unrivaled knowledge of published texts, manuscripts, private papers, and essays in this most illuminating of critical works.

Genres: Poetry, Biography, Nonfiction, Criticism, Literary Criticism

448 pages, Paperback

Published May 22, 2000

About the author

Edward Mendelson is a professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the literary executor of the Estate of W.H. Auden and the author or editor of several books about Auden's work, including Early Auden (1981) and Later Auden (1999). He is also the author of The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life (2006), about nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels, and Moral Agents: Eight Twentieth-Century American Writers (2015).
He has edited standard editions of works by W. H. Auden, including Collected Poems (1976; 2nd edn. 1990; 3rd edn., 2007), The English Auden (1977), Selected Poems (1979, 2nd edn., 2007), As I Walked Out One Evening (selected light verse, 1995), and the continuing Complete Works of W. H. Auden (1986– ).
His work on Thomas Pynchon includes Pynchon: A Collection of Critical Essays (1978) and numerous essays, including "The Sacred, the Profane, and The Crying of Lot 49" (1975; reprinted in the 1978 collection) and "Gravity's Encyclopedia" (in Mindful Pleasures: Essays on Thomas Pynchon). The latter essay introduced the critical category of "encyclopedic narrative," further elaborated in a later essay, "Encyclopedic Narrative from Dante to Pynchon".
He is the editor of annotated editions of novels by Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, Arnold Bennett, H.G. Wells, and Anthony Trollope. With Michael Seidel he co-edited Homer to Brecht; The European Epic and Dramatic Traditions (1977).
He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015. He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2017. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was the first Isabel Dalhousie Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh.
Before teaching at Columbia, he was an associate professor of English at Yale University and a visiting associate professor of English at Harvard University. He received a B.A. from the University of Rochester (1966) and a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University (1969).
Since 1986 he has written about computing, software, and typography and is a contributing editor of PC Magazine.
He is married to the writer Cheryl Mendelson.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a literary biography, this volume is a history and interpretation of W.H. Auden's work up to 1939, the pivotal year in which Europe's peace was finally shattered and Auden left England for America. It does not dwell overmuch (if at all) on events in Auden's life but on the evolution of his writing and philosophy. A large part of this volume is devoted to a close examination of Auden's dramatic writings. The book is mostly organized chronologically with some deviations from a strict timeline since Auden frequently revised his older writings as his personal philosophies evolved, and he denied or even felt ashamed of his earlier ideas. Edward Mendelson, the literary executor of Auden's Estate, is widely and rightly recognized as the most knowledgeable Auden scholar. His profound insight into Auden's work make this and its subsequent volume essential texts for readers wanting a deep dive into the poet's work. I found it appropriately dense but very readable.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's important to note this is NOT a conventional biography, nor was it intended to be. It's a (highly, sometimes densely) detailed study of Auden's early poetry before 1939, with an emphasis on subjects, influences, and themes more than language or biographical detail. If you're already deeply read in Auden's works and wish to raise your game, has Mendelson got a book for you. But other readers will quickly become bogged down in the details, and the author's style will likely keep them there.

A valuable book for its intended audience, but not for the general reader.

[David Bjorlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unquestionably brilliant--but sometimes a little too brilliant for those who are drawn to Auden because of his clarity and warmth.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

brilliant but difficult biography -- astonishing how little personal information can be put into a rather long book about a rather short period!

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best part is the section on The Orators (John Ashbery's favorite Auden book). Auden added a preface to it in the '60s when it was republished it pretty much disavowing it, and saying something like he has no idea what he was doing (oh I'm sure) but the book could have been written by someone who ended up as a Nazi. I suspect Auden at some point had Goebbels as a touchpoint -- who he feared he could become.

Anyway, the Early Auden is certainly a detailed study of his poems from a psychological viewpoint -- I would have been more interested if had talked more about the mechanics of the poetry, it's sources or influences.

The books stops at 1939 when Auden is emigrating to the USA. Does anyone know if the Later Auden contains a discussion of The Platonic Blow (written 1948)?

[Shime'on Petrus]

mostly biographical. Nonetheless an essential guide thorugh Auden's manifold poetical production