W. H. Auden (1907â1973) is one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, and his reputation has only grown since his death. Published on the hundredth anniversary of the year in which he began to write poetry, this is the second volume of the first complete edition of Audenâs poems. Edited, introduced, and annotated by renowned Auden scholar Edward Mendelson, this definitive edition includes all the poems Auden wrote for publication, in their original texts, and all his later revised versions, as well as poems and songs he never published, some of them printed here for the first time.
This volume follows Auden as a mature artist, containing all the poems that he published or submitted for publication from 1940 until his death in 1973, at age sixty-six. This includes all his poetry collections from this period, from The Double Man (1941) through Epistle to a Godson (1972). The volume also features an edited version of his incomplete, posthumous book Thank You, Fog, as well as his self-designated âposthumousâ poems.
The main text presents the poems in their original published versions. The notes include the extensive revisions that he made to his poems over the course of his career, and provide explanations of obscure references.
The first volume of this edition, Poems, Volume I: 1927â1939, is also available.
Awards and Recognition
- A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year
- A New Statesman Book of the Year
- A Daily Telegraph Best Poetry Book of the Year
- A Tablet Book of the Year
"A dazzling, scholarly triumph."âMichael Dirda, Washington Post
"Mendelson has championed a reassessment of the poetâs later work. He has not achieved this through polemic, but rather through a patient and careful effort. . . . I have been reading and teaching and writing about Audenâs poetry for many years, but I have taken the opportunity offered by these two volumes to try, as best I can, to encounter it all anew."âAlan Jacobs, Harper's Magazine
"Glorious."âBel Mooney, Daily Mail
"Exhilaratingly prospective. . . . some of the most vivid poems ever committed to English . . . these two books are a monument to the acumen, scholarship, and perseverance of Edward Mendelson."âRon Horning, Brooklyn Rail
"Magnificent. . . . Mendelsonâs Auden has long been regarded as a monument of literary scholarship, and these two heavy poetry volumes complete the grounds for that acclaim. . . . An amazing thicket of scholarship and commentary draped around some of the most-studied and most-quoted poetry of the 20th century."âSteve Donoghue, Open Letters Review
"To read Audenâs Complete Works therefore is not just to encounter the inventions of a polymathic, often ingenious writer and poet, but to enter into a âwhole climate of opinion,â to explore an age by way of one of its representative figures. . . . Edifying."âJames Matthew Wilson, National Review
"The new two-volume set of W. H. Auden's complete poems, meticulously assembled and presented by Edward Mendelson, is highly recommended."âDavid Lehman, Best American Poetry Blog
"[Audenâs] oeuvre has been given a new life. . . . [in these] two new and heavily annotated volumes. . . . [Mendelsonâs] mastery of this sprawling material is legendary."âBrad Leithauser, Wall Street Journal
"As authoritative a presentation as we are likely ever to get. . . . Wonderful books."âDavid Mason, Hudson Review
"In a remarkable work of scholarship, editor Edward Mendelson has assembled every poem and every revisionâand explains every reference. . . . For the budding or mature poet, itâs indispensable."âMosaic
"A remarkable editorial enterprise."âDavid Bromwich, Times Literary Supplement
"These volumes show the poetic beauty and intellectual audacity of Audenâs work with a power that left me exultant."âRichard Davenport-Hines, Times Literary Supplement
"Auden can be magically conversational, charming and sophisticated, vivid, lyrical and amusing. A master of rhyme and metre, he has a brilliant range of allusions and important ideas, wisdom and moral force."âJeffrey Meyers, PN Review
"A grand thing."âTristram Fane Saunders, Daily Telegraph
"Mendelson could not have conceived a more fitting tribute to this poet than doing for Audenâs work what Auden was always attempting to do for his own life: organize it intellectually into a grand system that takes in every detail and provides aesthetic satisfaction to the soul. . . . The definitive edition of Audenâs poetry."âStephen J. Schuler, Ad Fontes
"[These two volumes] compiled and magisterially edited by Edward Mendelson, a leading Auden authority, should show readers what a versatile and commanding voice the poet possessed."âAndrew Rosenheim, The Tablet
"Edward Mendelsonâs two-volume collection of Audenâs poems, spanning 1927 to 1973, is a welcome arrival, compiled by sage hands. . . . [Mendelson] is perhaps the poetâs best reader."âNick Ripatrazone, National Review
"Two volumes which Auden admirers and scholars will surely welcome as the apotheosis of the 91ÌÒÉ« series, and of Mendelson’s Auden publications."âMick Gowar, Book 2.0
