Offers W H Auden's prose that provides a fresh picture of this legendary writer's mind and art when he was at the height of his powers, from 1956 through 1962, including the years when he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford.

Preface ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction xiii The Text of This Edition xxxvii ESSAYS AND REVIEWS, 1956-1962 At the End of the Quest, Victory 3 An Appreciation of the Lyric Verse of Walter de la Mare 6 Stimulating Scholarship 8 Hic et Ille 12 Introduction to Selected Writings of Sydney Smith 13 Introduction to The Descent of the Dove, by Charles Williams 25 Wisdom, Wit, Music 30 Making, Knowing and Judging 34 Walter de la Mare 34 An Eye for Mystery 37 Foreword to The Green Wall, by James Wright 39 The Great Captains 44 D. H. Lawrence as a Critic 48 Dostoevsky in Siberia 53 Concrete and Fastidious 57 Squares and Oblongs 63 The Wish Game 66 Guy Burgess 67 The Voltaire of Music 67 A Great Hater 71 A Grecian Eye 74 Just How I Feel 77 Sydney Smith: The Kind-Hearted Wit 82 West's Disease 88 Straw Without Bricks 88 Seventh Heavens 92 Crying Spoils the Appearance 95 Preface to Nulla Vogliamo dal Sogno, by Nino D'Ambra 99 Commentary on the Poetry and Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet 100 Foreword to A Crackling of Thorns, by John Hollander 113 Talent, Genius, and Unhappiness 118 The Great Divide 129 "A Mental Prince" 132 Music in Shakespeare: Its Dramatic Use in His Plays 135 Preface to Jean Sans Terre, by Yvan Goll 135 A Jolly Magpie 137 Reflections upon Reading Werner Jaeger's Paideia 145 The Life of a That-There Poet 153 The Kitchen of Life 166 The Sacred Cold 173 A Song of Life's Power to Renew 177 Foreword to Of the Festivity, by William Dickey 179 Thinking What We Are Doing 184 The Creation of Music and Poetry 190 The Co-Inherence 197 The Greek Self 201 Calm Even in the Catastrophe 209 John Betjeman's Poetic Universe 216 The Private Life of a Public Man 221 Miss Marianne Moore, Bless Her! 226 The Fallen City: Some Reflections on Shakespeare's Henry IV 230 Foreword: Brand versus Peer 230 Foreword to Times Three, by Phyllis McGinley 241 The Magician from Mississippi 247 A Children's Anthology 251 Apologies to the Iroquois 252 An Unclassical Classic 259 The Queen Is Never Bored 266 Foreword to Van Gogh: A Self-Portrait 281 Statement by W. H. Auden on Cultural Freedom 282 Greatness Finding Itself 283 K 289 Introduction to The Complete Poems of Cavafy 290 Two Ways of Poetry 298 The Problem of Nowness 303 Three Memoranda on the New Arden Shakespeare: From W. H. Auden 307 A Public Art 309 Il Faut Payer 312 The Poet as Professor 317 Two Cultural Monuments 320 Introduction to Italian Journey, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 324 The Case Is Curious 333 Ronald Firbank and an Amateur World 335 A Poet of Honor 342 The Alienated City: Reflections on Othello 347 A Marriage of True Minds 348 Dag Hammarskjold 354 The Untruth about Beethoven 356 The Quest Hero 360 A Universal Eccentric 374 The Conscience of an Artist 378 Books of the Year ... from W. H. Auden 382 The Chemical Life 382 Anger 385 Foreword to The Viking Book of Aphorisms 390 A Marianne Moore Reader 392 The Poet and the City 395 Introduction to A Choice of de la Mare's Verse 396 Today's Poet 404 A Disturbing Novelist 405 "The Geste Says this and the Man Who Was on the Field ..." 408 The Justice of Dame Kind 412 Today's "Wonder-World" Needs Alice 414 Strachey's Cry 422 Are the English Europeans? 428 Do You Know Too Much? 436 Mirror: A Set of Notes 441 England & Europe 441 THE DYER'S HAND The Dyer's Hand 447 APPENDICES I Creweian Orations 829 II Auden as Anthologist and Editor 848 III Public Lectures 858 IV Auden on the Air 873 V Endorsements and Citations 892 VI Public Letters Signed by Auden and Others 896 VII Translations 898 VIII Lost and Unwritten Work 900 TEXTUAL NOTES Essays and Reviews, 1956-1962 903 The Dyer's Hand 945 Index of Titles and Books Reviewed 979

"Volume IV of Auden's prose ... is, like the others, edited by Edward J. Mendelson with unparalleled care and discretion, but it allows us an additional pleasure, since The Dyer's Hand occupies its last major part. Thus we can read that book as Auden wanted us to, before or after we look at the rest of the prose ... or we could just dip and skim in the whole volume, go away and come back, guided by names and titles and chance--there's plenty to keep us busy."--London Review of Books "This fourth volume of W. H. Auden's prose, edited and introduced by Edward Mendelson with customary mastery, covers a mere six years of the poet's life. But they were eventful years for him, personally and intellectually... The whole of The Dyer's Hand appears in this volume of the Complete Works, and most of what Auden drew from in making up the book is here, too, in its original and unrevised form."--Alan Jacobs, Books & Culture "I can give this collection a strong recommendation."--Alfred Corn, Gay and Lesbian Review "If anything, The Complete Works of W. H. Auden: Prose, Volume IV, 1956-1962 is a literary tour-de-force, that covers as well as conveys, almost everything this ultimate poet, writer, quintessential observer of life and critic, was all about... [This] is a very well conceived and comprehensive 'lucky accident.' Not to mention an all-round, terrific book."--David Marx, David Marx Book Reviews Praise for the previous volume: "Prose, Volume III is wonderfully edited, like all the many editions of Auden supervised by Edward Mendelson... [T]he articles will delight any reader with their wit, charm, and elegance."--Charles Rosen, New York Review of Books Praise for the previous volume: "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 twentieth-century English poet has been so fully and patiently honoured."--Frank Kermode, London Review of Books Praise for the previous volume: "No major writer's complete works are more fun to read."--Publishers Weekly "While most pieces of the volume can be found in other manners, this compilation enables readers to discover more easily and efficiently gems of prose phrasing about poetry, criticism and their purpose, and the poet's readings of and connections between his work and that of his contemporaries and predecessors in significantly contemplative years of his life."--Emily Kane, Review of English Studies