Saturday, May 18, 2013

Lost W.H. Auden Journal Found


The Independent unearths the story of it being discovered.

From the article...

It is one of only three journals that the poet is known to have kept and covers the period shortly after what he described as the “eleven happiest weeks of my life” – the honeymoon period of his relationship with the American poet Chester Kallman.

The frank details of his personal life are set against the build-up to the Second World War. He wrote: “I am happy, but in debt… I have no job. My [US] visa is out of order. There may be a war. But I have an epithalamion to write and cannot worry much.”

The journal is 96 pages long and covers the background to his feted poem September 1, 1939, written at the outbreak of the Second World War.

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