This fifth volume of W. H. Auden's prose displays a great writer s mind in its full maturity of wisdom, learning, and emotional and moral intelligence. It contains his most personally revealing essays, the ones in which he wrote for the first time about the full history of his family life, his sexuality, and the development of his moral and religious beliefs. Among these works are the lightly disguised autobiographies that appear in long essays on the Protestant mystics and on Shakespeare s sonnets. The book also features the full text of his T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures, Secondary Worlds, and many unpublished or unavailable lectures and speeches.
Edward Mendelson s introduction and comprehensive notes provide biographical and historical explanations of obscure references. The text includes corrections and revisions that Auden marked in personal copies of his work and that are published here for the first time.