Auden, W.H.

8vo (202 x 154mm.), FIRST TRADE EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY AUDEN TO EDWARD UPWARD ("To Edward Upward | With best wishes | from | Wystan Auden") on the half-title, original blue printed wrappers, sky blue collector's box, spine darkened and chipped

Bloomfield and Mendelson A2(a); see Carpenter, Humphrey. W.H. Auden: A Biography (1981), p.118

Condition is as described in the main body of the cataloguing, where appropriate.
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INSCRIBED BY AUDEN TO HIS FELLOW 30s WRITER UPWARD, "a born romantic revolutionary" (Isherwood), A KEY INFLUENCE ON HIS EARLY WORK.

W.H. Auden and Edward Upward (1903--2009) first met in 1927 through their mutual friend Christopher Isherwood, to whom Auden dedicated this work. The pair became good friends, with Auden regularly visiting the school where Upward taught in Scarborough and Ottershaw. Auden himself acknowledged the great influence Upward and Isherwood's Mortmere stories had on his writing during the early thirties. Included in this lot is a photocopy of the letter from Auden dated 6 October 1930 which would have accompanied this copy: "I thought you might like a copy of this", Auden writes. "I shall never know how much in these poems is filched from you via Christopher."

Upward was a key figure in the "Auden generation" and "had an influence far greater than his always small readership suggested. Isherwood described him as 'the judge before whom all my work must stand trial' (All the Conspirators), while W. H. Auden's early work was indebted to Upward's imaginative world" (Peter Parker, Oxford DNB).