Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, North Yorkshire, as the son of George Augustus Auden, a distinguished physician, and Rosalie (Bicknell) Auden. Solihull in the West Midlands, where Auden was brought up, remained important to him as a poet. Auden was educated at St. Edmund's Hindhood and then at Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk. In 1925 he entered Christ Church, Oxford. Auden's studies and writing progressed without much success: he took a disappointing third-class degree in English. And his first collection of poems was rejected by T. S. Eliot at Faber & Faber. At one time in his undergraduate years he planned to become a biologist. From 1928 to 1929 he lived in Berlin, where he took advantage of the sexually liberal atmosphere, and was introduced to the psychological theories of Homer Lane.
After returning to England Auden taught at a prep school, in 1930 privately in London, at Larchfield Academy, a boys' school in Helensburgh (Scotland), and at Downs School, Colwall,......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 1241
Approximate Pages: 5 (260 words per double-spaced page) |