Contains various of W H Auden's prose works from 1949 through 1955, including various essays that exemplify his range, wit, depth, and wisdom. This book includes the text of Auden's first separately published prose book, "The Enchafed Flood", or, "The Romantic Iconography of the Sea", followed by more than one hundred essays, reviews and lectures.

Preface ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction xiii The Text of This Edition xxxv THE ENCHAFED FLOOD The Enchafed Flood 1 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS, 1949-1955 A Note on Graham Greene 95 In Memoriam [Theodore Spencer] 96 Port and Nuts with the Eliots 97 The Question of the Pound Award 101 Introductions to Poets of the English Language 103 Sixty-Six Sestets 154 Notebooks of Somerset Maugham 156 Firbank Revisited 159 Nature, History and Poetry [1949] 161 Then and Now: 1935-1950 164 Jean Cocteau 168 Religion and the Intellectuals: A Symposium 170 Introduction to Red Ribbon on a White Horse, by Anzia Yezierska 177 A Playboy of the Western World: St Oscar, the Homintern Martyr 184 Of Poetry in Troubled Greece 188 A Guidebook for All Good Counter-Revolutionaries 190 The Score and Scale of Berlioz 193 The Things Which Are Caesar's 196 A That There Sort of Writer 210 Introduction to Selected Prose and Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe 215 Foreword to A Change of World, by Adrienne Cecile Rich 224 Nature, History and Poetry [1950] 226 Young Boswell 233 Some December Books Chosen for the Trade Book Clinic 237 In an Age Like Ours, the Artist Works in a State of Siege 240 Aeneid for Our Time 242 Address to the Indian Congress for Cultural Freedom 246 Some Reflections on Opera as a Medium 250 The Philosophy of a Lunatic 255 Eliot on Eliot 257 Foreword to A Mask for Janus, by W. S. Merwin 259 Keats in His Letters 262 A Review of Short Novels of Colette 267 The World That Books Have Made 270 Portrait of a Whig 273 Introduction to The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard 285 Some Reflections on Music and Opera 296 The Adult Voice of America 302 While the Oboes Came Up, the Bagpipes Went Down 305 Notes on the Comic 307 Our Italy 319 [Hic et Ille] 323 Keeping the Oriflamme Burning 335 Sigmund Freud 340 Foreword to Various Jangling Keys, by Edgar Bogardus 344 Foreword to The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole, by Frederick Rolfe, Baron Corvo 347 The Rake's Progress 351 T. S. Eliot So Far 352 Two Sides to a Thorny Problem 356 Cav & Pag 358 Through the Collar-Bone of a Hare 364 Transplanted Englishman Views U.S. 369 Verga's Place 374 Zahl und Gesicht 377 Huck and Oliver 378 Selected Essays of T. S. Eliot 382 The Greatness of Freud 385 Translation and Tradition 388 Speaking of Books 391 Ballet's Present Eden 393 Foreword to An Armada of Thirty Whales, by Daniel G. Hoffman 396 Words and Music 399 A Message from W. H. Auden [on Dylan Thomas] 407 A Contemporary Epic 407 The Man Who Wrote Alice 413 Handbook to Antiquity 416 A Consciousness of Reality 419 The Word and the Machine 425 A European View of Peace 427 England: Six Unexpected Days 431 Introduction to An Elizabethan Song Book, by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman 435 Balaam and the Ass 444 The Freud-Fliess Letters 472 Introduction to The Visionary Novels of George Macdonald 477 How Cruel Is April? 481 Holding the Mirror Up to History 483 The Hero Is a Hobbit 489 A World Imaginary, but Real 491 The Private Diaries of Stendhal (1801-1814) 494 Fog in the Mediterranean 498 The Pool of Narcissus 502 Introduction to The Faber Book of Modern American Verse 506 "I Am of Ireland" 514 [A Tribute to Paul Claudel] 521 Authority in America 521 Am I That I Am? 527 Man before Myth 532 The Dyer's Hand 536 Qui e l'uom' felice 569 Speaking of Books 571 [Contribution to Modern Canterbury Pilgrims] 573 Foreword to Some Trees, by John Ashbery 580 Bile and Brotherhood 584 L'Homme d'Esprit 590 The History of an Historian 596 A Self-Policing People 602 Reflections on The Magic Flute 604 Putting It in English 609 ADDENDA TO PROSE II E. M. Forster 613 A Lecture in a College Course 614 An Endorsement 614 APPENDICES I Record Sleeves and Program Notes 617 II Auden as Anthologist and Editor 622 III Public Lectures and Courses 636 IV Endorsements and Citations 674 V Auden on the Air 675 VI Public Letters Signed by Auden and Others 694 VII Lost and Unwritten Work 698 TEXTUAL NOTES The Enchafed Flood 703 Essays and Reviews, 1949-1955 708 Index of Titles and Books Reviewed 777

"Prose, Volume III is wonderfully edited, like all the many editions of Auden supervised by Edward Mendelson... Most of the articles will delight any reader with their wit. charm, and elegance."--Charles Rosen, The New York Review of Books "[Auden's] versatility and spikily independent literary intelligence are frequently on display in Prose, Volume Three: 1949-1955, the most recent volume in the magnificent Complete Works."--Stefan Collini, Times Literary Supplement "This latest installment of Edward Mendelson's edition of the Complete Works contains Auden's prose writings from a mere six years, roughly the poet's forties. It was preceded by two large volumes covering 1926 to 1938 and 1939 to 1948. The three total more than two thousand pages and there will have to be at least one more volume, covering the period between 1955 and Auden's death in 1973. When you add in the volumes already devoted to plays, libretti, poems, it becomes hard to avoid describing the whole enterprise as heroic. In fact it could also be described as unique, for no other 20th-century English poet has been so fully and patiently honoured."--Frank Kermode, London Review of Books "This third volume of his complete prose is the best yet...Here is the ambitious set of lectures published as The Enchafed Flood, about the Romantic hero and the sea, in Melville, Baudelaire and (taken with entire seriousness) Edward Lear. Here are the influential reviews of Tolkien and the introductions to first books by Adrienne Rich and John Ashbery... No major writer's complete works are more fun to read."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Few great and greatly prolific poets wrote as much irresistible and glorious prose as W.H. Auden but he was, by any assay, one of the greatest essayists and critics of the 20th century. And here we have Auden in his 40s, one of the greatest eras of Auden prose, the era of The Enchafed Flood, and so many of the essays collected in The Dyer's Hand."--Jeff Simon, Buffalo News "With the fifth volume of his 'Complete Works' and the third of his prose out--with a fourth, and final volume promised--we can glimpse almost the full range of [Auden's] interests and his remarkable versatility...When Auden felt affinity with a subject, his prose could dazzle. His essay here on Oscar Wilde, 'A Playboy of the Western World: St. Oscar, the Hominterm Martyr,' is at once poignant and astute, as is his fine introduction to a selection of Edgar Allan Poe's writings. But the best essay may be 'Portrait of a Whig,' Auden's searching and affectionate study of the inimitable Sydney Smith (1771-1845)."--Eric Ormsby, New York Sun "In part the appeal of this volume derives from its author's aphoristic cast of mind, but more significant is the self-evident fact Auden was a poet first and a critic second: for all his love of lists and categories, his thought is always round, never linear. He is able to see, as only a poet can, that rules don't always apply, that they can sometimes be broken."--Oliver Dennis, The Australian Praise for previous volumes: "To have found and contextualized the material collected in this second volume of Auden's prose is a magnificent achievement, and Edward Mendelson's immaculately handled edition will be a scholarly resource of a permanent kind."--Peter MacDonald, Times Literary Supplement Praise for previous volumes: "This essential volume in a projected complete edition restores the voracious reader and never pedantic critic to the master poet."--Publisher's Weekly Praise for previous volumes: "The Complete Works, edited with elegant scruple by Auden's literary executor Edward Mendelson is ... the only way to get at Auden as he happened, year by year, bit by bit, and not as he, or his later biographers, want us to think of him."--Tom D'Evelyn, Boston Book Review Praise for previous volumes: "The collection, which can be dipped into as well as read as a whole, is a feast of language and insight."--Arthur Kirsch, Washington Post Book World "Mendelson's introductions to each of the five installments so far of Auden's Complete Works have been unfailingly elegant and magisterial."--Alan Jacobs, Books & Culture "This scholarly collection, with its seventy pages of notes on variant readings, revives many interesting pieces as well as numerous others of interest mainly to academics."--Larry Koenigsberg, Magill Book Reviews "This excellent tomb of a book is as academic as it is entertaining as it is informative as it is inspiring as it is (obviously) superbly well written. The only downside being, it ensures the literary bar is so highly placed, it ensures the rest of us can only ever negotiate coming close--if, with the exception of a selected few, such a thing is remotely possible."--David Marx, bookreviews.davidmarx.co.uk