Forewords and Afterwords is a prose book by W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

 published in 1973.

The book contains 46 essays by Auden on literary, historical, and religious subjects, written between 1943 and 1972 and slightly revised for this volume.

The essays include Auden's introduction to The Portable Greek Reader (retitled "The Greeks and Us" in this volume), his introduction to the anthology The Protestant Mystics, his introduction to an edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets, reviews and introductions on Goethe, Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith was an English writer and Anglican cleric. -Life:Born in Woodford, Essex, England, Smith was the son of merchant Robert Smith and Maria Olier , who suffered from epilepsy...

, Kierkegaard, Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

, Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language....

, Wagner, Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

, A. E. Housman

A. E. Housman

Alfred Edward Housman , usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems were mostly written before 1900...

, Cavafy, Kipling, Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...

, Dag Hammarskjöld

Dag Hammarskjöld

Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld was a Swedish diplomat, economist, and author. An early Secretary-General of the United Nations, he served from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. He is the only person to have been awarded a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize. Hammarskjöld...

, and others, and a partly autobiographical essay, "As It Seemed To Us".

The contents were selected by Edward Mendelson

Edward Mendelson

Edward Mendelson is a professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the literary executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden and the author or editor of several books about Auden's work, including Early Auden and Later...

 and the book is dedicated to Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...

.

External links

• Excerpts on Wikiquote.
• The W. H. Auden Society