Auden, W(ystan) H(ugh)

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English-born US poet. He wrote some of his most original poetry, such as Look, Stranger! (1936), in the 1930s when he led the influential left-wing literary group that included the writers Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender, and Cecil Day-Lewis. Auden moved to the USA in 1939, became a US citizen in 1946, and adopted a more conservative and Christian viewpoint, for example in The Age of Anxiety (1947). He also wrote verse dramas with English writer Christopher Isherwood, such as The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935) and The Ascent of F6 (1936), and opera librettos, notably for Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress (1951). Auden was professor of poetry at Oxford 1956–61. His last works, including Academic Graffiti (1971) and Thank You, Fog (1973), are light and mocking in style and tone, but are dazzling virtuoso performances by a poet who recognized his position as the leading writer in verse of his time.

Auden was born in York and studied at Oxford University. On moving to the USA, he became associate professor of English literature at the University of Michigan in 1939. Later he spent part of each year in Austria, and returned to live in England a year before his death.

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