21 February: WH Auden

W. H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden, poet, was born on this date in 1907. 10 facts about him:

1. The WH stands for Wystan Hugh.

2. His father was a doctor and his mother a trained missionary nurse.

3. Both his grandfathers were Anglican clergymen and his mother a devout member of the church, so as a child, Auden attended church regularly and sang in the choir. He credits his love of the English language to church services. That said, as a teenager he lost interest in religion altogether.

4. In 1925, he went up to Christ Church, Oxford, with a scholarship in biology, but switched to English in his second year. He attended lectures by JRR Tolkien. On Old English Poetry.

5. He was versatile. Auden published about four hundred poems, including seven long poems. He wrote in a wide variety of styles (eg limericks, haiku, ballads and epics) and about a wide variety of subjects from the corns on his feet to the cosmos. He also wrote more than four hundred essays and reviews about literature, history, politics, Music, religion, and many other subjects. He collaborated on plays with Christopher Isherwood and on opera libretti with Chester Kallman.

6. He served in the Spanish Civil War. His experiences inspired him to write a poem, Spain, which George Orwell said was “one of the few decent things that have been written about the Spanish Civil War.”

7. By the time the second world war broke out he was living in the United States. He’d gone there with Christopher Isherwood on the back of the success of their plays. Although Auden kept his British citizenship his reputation at home suffered as a result of this “defection”. He did offer to return to Britain to serve in the war but was told only qualified people of his age (32) were required.

8. He was married to a woman called Erika Mann from 1935 until she died in 1969. It was, however, a marriage of convenience and they never lived together. Auden married her at the request of her father, Thomas Mann, so she could escape Nazi Germany, where she faced persecution for being a lesbian. Auden also helped arrange for Erika’s lover, Therese Giehse, to marry the writer John Hampson, so they could both leave Germany. Auden was gay and the love of his life was Chester Kallman, who he met in America.

9. Prior to his death, he prohibited any of his private letters from being released to the public. He told his friends to burn any personal letter of his they came across.

10. Auden died at 66 of heart failure at the Altenburgerhof Hotel in Vienna in 1973.