As more and more biographical material surfaces, these contradictions are intensified rather than resolved. But contradictions notwithstanding, he continues to receive recognition as one of the most important poets of the century, and as one of its most representative figures as well.
Wystan Hugh Auden was the son of a nurse and a doctor and the third of three brothers. His father had broad scientific and scholarly interests; his mother was an accomplished musician and devoutly religious; both parents were committed to public service. He was educated at St. Edmund's preparatory school in Surrey (1915-1920); at Gresham's in Holt, Norfolk (1920-1925); and at Christ Church College, Oxford (1925-1928), which he entered on a scientific fellowship, later switching to English. At Oxford, and throughout the decade following his graduation, he was at the center of a group of young writers (including Christopher Isherwood, Stephen Spender, and C. Day Lewis) that his voice especially seemed to define: the Auden Generation, as Sam Hynes describes it in a book by that title.
After being graduated from Oxford with--like other great poets before him--an undistinguished degree (third-class honors), Auden lived for eighteen months in Berlin.
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