Later Auden (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Edward Mendelson
- First Published: 1999
- Type of Work: Literary biography
- Time of Work: 1939-1973
- Setting: The United States
- Principal Characters: Wystan Hugh (W. H.) Auden, Chester Kallman
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: Teaching or teachers, New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Gay men, Homosexuality or homosexuals, New York City, Literature, World War II, Poetry or poets, World War I, Western Europe or western Europeans
- Locales: United States
Writing literary biography has always been a challenge. Frequently, writers lead rather pedestrian lives, and the only excitement they create occurs when they publish a new novel or volume of poetry. Few biographers are blessed with subjects as inherently interesting (some would say infuriating) as Ernest Hemingway or George Gordon, Lord Byron. The best literary biographies, such as Walter Jackson Bate’s life of John Keats, combine details about the subject’s life with critical analyses of the work. Balancing life and work is often tricky, however, and few biographers are successful...
[The entire page is 1917 words long]
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