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W. H. Auden: Life
Auden was born in York and spent his early childhood in Harborne, Birmingham, where his father Dr George Auden was the school medical officer for Birmingham and Professor of Public Health at the University of Birmingham. From the age of eight Auden was sent away to boarding schools, first in Surrey and later Norfolk, but he returned to Birmingham for the holidays.
He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford University, but took only a third-class degree. After Oxford he went to live for a year in Weimar Berlin, in whose tolerant atmosphere his homosexuality could be more openly expressed.On returning to England, he taught at three boys' schools from 1930 to 1935. The most important of these, and where he was happiest, was the Downs School, near Great Malvern. Here he spent three years and wrote some of his finest early love poems: including
This lunar beauty; "Lay your sleeping head, my love"; "Fish in the unruffled lakes"; and "Out on the lawn I lie in bed".
Auden married Erika Mann, lesbian daughter of the great German novelist Thomas Mann, in 1935. The motive for this was to provide his bride with a passport to escape the Third Reich. The marriage produced no children and the two were later divorced.
Auden settled in the United States in 1939 and became a naturalized citizen in 1946 . This move away from England, just as the Second World War was starting, was seen by many as a betrayal and his poetic reputation suffered briefly as a result. Having spent many years in the United States he returned to Europe during the last years of his life and spent that time predominantly in Austria, and Oxford in the UK; he had been Professor of Poetry at Oxford University during the 1950s. His long time love and companion was the poet Chester Kallman. He died in Vienna in 1973.
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