The thirties and after : poetry, politics, people (1933-75)

where his friends included those writers with whom his name was to be linked as the Thirties Generation: Auden, Day Lewis, MacNeice, Isherwood and Upward. In I g28 he printed his and Auden 's first books of poems on his own hand press. His book, Poems, was accepted by T. S. Eliot for Faber and Faber and it appeared in Ig33• He went to Spain during the Spanish Civil War and worked as a propagandist for the Republicans. With Cyril Connolly he founded Horizon in 1939 and co-edited it until 1g42 when he joined the National Fire Service in London. At the end of the Second World War, under the auspices of the Foreign Office, he travelled in Germany and France. With Irving Kristol he founded Encounter in 1g53 and was its co-editor until 1g65. Since the late Ig4os he has spent much time in the United States where he has been Visiting Professor at xnany universities; and in I965-6 he was Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress. In England, he was Professor of English at University College, London, from xg68 to Ig73• He has also travelled widely in Europe. Stephen Spender published his Collected Poems in I g55 and has since published a further collection, The Generous Days (Ig7I). His autobiography, World Within World, appeared in Ig5I. He has also published one play, Trial of a Judge (Ig38), a novel, The Backward Son (I g4o), and several books of criticism including The Destructive Element (Ig35) and The Struggle of the Modern (Ig63). His other prose books include The Tear of the Toung Rebels (1g6g) and Love- Hate Relations (Ig74). Among those writers whose work he has translated are Rilke, Buchner, Lorca and Schiller. Front Matter....Pages 1-8 Introduction....Pages 9-10 Front Matter....Pages 11-11 Background to the Thirties....Pages 13-33 W. B. Yeats: A Vision....Pages 34-36 Wyndham Lewis: One-Way Song....Pages 37-40 D. H. Lawrence: Phoenix....Pages 41-45 Louis Aragon: The Red Front....Pages 46-47 Poetry and Revolution....Pages 48-53 The Poetic Dramas of W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood....Pages 54-61 Tangiers and Gibraltar Now....Pages 62-65 Heroes in Spain....Pages 66-70 Spain Invites the World’s Writers....Pages 71-79 I Join the Communist Party....Pages 80-82 Front Matter....Pages 83-83 Background to the Forties....Pages 85-100 September Journal....Pages 101-132 Rhineland Journey....Pages 133-151 Front Matter....Pages 153-153 Background to the Fifties....Pages 155-166 Journal....Pages 167-185 Notes on Revolutionaries and Reactionaries....Pages 186-208 Front Matter....Pages 209-209 Background to the Sixties....Pages 211-217 Journal....Pages 218-237 Front Matter....Pages 209-209 Remembering Eliot....Pages 238-264 Journal....Pages 265-266 Cyril Connolly, November 1974....Pages 267-267 W. H. Auden....Pages 268-275 Postscript....Pages 276-278 Back Matter....Pages 279-286