Poems (Auden)
Poems is the title of three separate collections of the early poetry of
The privately-printed 1928 edition of Poems was of "about 45 copies", as stated on its limitation page; probably only around 30 copies were actually printed. It is one of the great rarities of twentieth century literature.[citation needed]
The 1930 commercially published edition of Poems appeared from Faber and Faber in 1930, having been accepted by
In 1933, when Poems was reprinted, Auden replaced seven of the poems in the 1930 edition with poems that he had written during the year 1930, after completing the 1930 version of the book. Auden revised or dropped many of the poems in the 1933 edition for the collections and selections that he prepared in the 1940s and later.
The 1934 edition, published by Random House, was Auden's first published book in the United States. The publisher included all three of the books that Auden had published in the UK in this volume.
For a few readers and critics, such as Randall Jarrell, the 1930 and 1933 versions remain Auden's greatest achievement.
References
- W. H. Auden: A Bibliography, by B. C. Bloomfield and Edward Mendelson, 2nd edition (1973)
- Edward Mendelson, Early Auden (1981)
External links
- Books at the W. H. Auden Society