Peter MacDonald, Times Literary Supplement
Edward Mendelson's immaculately handled edition will be a scholarly resource of a permanent kind.


Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
Overwhelming... number and variety of... subjects addressed, ideas aired, capital letters employed, and systems invented to prove a small point.


Choice
Auden's range of topics is impressively, even dizzyingly broad. . . . [T]he book is the model of an intelligently edited compilation.


Virginia Quarterly Review
Mendelson's meticulously edited collection will be a delight for all who relish the work of this massive, mid-century mind.


Review
Auden displays the capacious intellect, wide-ranging sympathies, and unfaltering brilliance that make him one of the most admired writers of the 20th century. Mendelson's meticulously edited collection will be a delight for all who relish the work of this massive, mid-century mind.


Book Description
W. H. Auden's first ten years in the United States were marked by rapid and extensive change in his life and thought. He became an American citizen, fell in love with Chester Kallman, and began to reflect on American culture and to explore the ideas of Reinhold Niebuhr and other Protestant theologians. This volume contains every piece of prose that Auden wrote during these years, including essays and reviews he published under pseudonyms. Most have never been reprinted in any form since their initial publication in such magazines and newspapers as the Nation, the New Republic, Common Sense, Vogue, and the New York Times. Auden's prose during this period is frequently directly autobiographical even as he comments on literature, psychology, politics, and religion. The writings range from a dialogue about W. B. Yeats through a respectful parody of Gertrude Stein to Jamesian essays on Henry James. They also include lively and often profound responses to ancient and modern history as well as to contemporary issues in politics and religion. Other highlights include writings on opera and poetry as well as reports of Auden's lectures and the text of an unfinished autobiographical book, The Prolific and the Devourer. Throughout, Edward Mendelson's extensive and illuminating editor's notes explain all contemporary and private allusions. By making available a large cache of important but previously difficult-to-obtain writings on key subjects, this volume will be of obvious appeal to Auden's legions of admirers. It will also be enjoyed by everyone interested in twentieth-century literature, religion, and culture.


About the Author
Edward Mendelson is the Literary Executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

FROM THE PUBLISHER