Prose

This is the fourth volume in a complete edition of Auden's works, following Plays, Libretti and Prose Volume I - 1926-1938. The collection of 580 pages includes the essays, reviews and other writings that Auden published or prepared for delivery from the time he arrived in America in January 1939 until the end of 1948. In the following year he wrote his first book of criticism The Enchafed Flood, and adopted a new set of themes in his essays and reviews. In his Introduction to this volume Professor Mendelson writes: 'Auden's prose in his American years combines a tone of confident authority with a comic irony that refuses to take itself seriously'. Some of the writings are of considerable length, among them the whole of his book of pensees and aphorisms The Prolific and the Devourer. Auden addresses himself to every conceivable subject - literature ancient and modern, art, politics, education, philosophy, religion, music, especially opera, and the theatre. The book is an exhilarating experience to read, and as an intellectual feat, and many of the pieces are reprinted here for the first time for half a century. The texts throughout have been, wherever possible, newly edited from Auden's manuscripts, and the notes report variant readings from the published versions.