Humphrey Carpenter's W. H. AUDEN: A BIOGRAPHY

 It's nice to have so many little details all in one place when I can only remember bits and pieces read from articles and other books about Auden. A useful reference. I think Carpenter is right to stress Auden's middle-class, Edwardian upbringing. His verse was innovative at all stages of his writing career, and he lived into the 1970s, but in his attitude to homosexuality, his longing for a settled, domestic life, and his return to the Christian fold, he showed the deep marks of home. Nevertheless Carpenter is alert to how Auden's travels and different habitations around the world influenced his writing. The biographer pays his subject the tribute of close attention.


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