Editing W. H. Auden (section)

==Life==
===Childhood===
[[File:54 Bootham York 4.jpg|thumb|upright|Auden's birthplace in York]]
Auden was born at [[54 Bootham]], [[York]], England, to [[George Augustus Auden]] (1872–1957), a physician, and Constance Rosalie Auden (née Bicknell; 1869–1941), who had trained (but never served) as a missionary nurse.<ref>Carpenter (1981) pp. 1–12.</ref> He was the third of three sons; the eldest, George Bernard Auden (1900–1978), became a farmer, while the second, [[John Bicknell Auden]] (1903–1991), became a geologist.<ref name="Wystan">The name Wystan derives from the 9th-century [[Wigstan of Mercia|St Wystan]], who was murdered by Beorhtfrith, the son of [[Beorhtwulf]], king of Mercia, after Wystan objected to Beorhtfrith's plan to marry Wystan's mother. His remains were reburied at [[Repton]], Derbyshire, where they became the object of a cult; the [[St Wystan's Church, Repton|parish church of Repton]] is dedicated to St Wystan. Auden's father, [[George Augustus Auden]], was educated at [[Repton School]].</ref> The Audens were minor gentry with a strong [[clergy|clerical]] tradition, originally of [[Rowley Regis]], later of [[Horninglow]], Staffordshire.<ref>Burke's Landed Gentry, 18th edition, vol. I, ed. Peter Townend, 1965, Auden formerly of Horninglow pedigree</ref>

Auden, whose grandfathers were both [[Church of England]] clergymen, grew up in an [[Anglo-Catholic]] household that followed a "[[High church|high]]" form of [[Anglicanism]], with doctrine and ritual resembling those of [[Catholicism]].<ref name="CarpenterNoPage">{{cite book |first = Humphrey |last = Carpenter |author-link = Humphrey Carpenter |title = W. H. Auden: A Biography |publisher = George Allen & Unwin |year = 1981 |location = London |isbn = 978-0-04-928044-1}}</ref><ref name="RDH-NoPage">{{cite book |first = Richard |last = Davenport-Hines |title = Auden |author-link = Richard Davenport-Hines |publisher = Heinemann |location = London |year = 1995 |isbn = 978-0-434-17507-9}}</ref> He traced his love of music and language partly to the church services of his childhood.<ref name="DNB"/> He believed he was of [[Icelanders|Icelandic]] descent, and his lifelong fascination with Icelandic legends and [[Old Norse]] sagas is evident in his work.<ref>{{cite book |first = Peter |last = Davidson |title = The Idea of North |publisher = Reaktion |location = London |year = 2005 |isbn = 978-1861892300}}</ref>

His family moved to Homer Road in [[Solihull]], near [[Birmingham]], in 1908,<ref name="DNB">{{cite ODNB |first=Edward |last = Mendelson |author-link=Edward Mendelson |title = Auden, Wystan Hugh (1907–1973) |edition = online |date = January 2011 |doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/30775 |url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30775 |access-date = 26 May 2013 }}{{Subscription or libraries}}</ref> where his father had been appointed the School Medical Officer and Lecturer (later Professor) of Public Health. Auden's lifelong [[psychoanalytic]] interests began in his father's library. From the age of eight he attended boarding schools, returning home for holidays.<ref>Carpenter (1981) pp. 16–20, 23–28.</ref> His visits to the [[Pennines|Pennine]] landscape and its declining lead-mining industry figure in many of his poems; the remote decaying mining village of [[Rookhope]] was for him a "sacred landscape", evoked in a late poem, "Amor Loci".<ref>Carpenter (1981) pp. 13, 23.</ref><ref>{{cite book | first1 = Alan |last1= Myers |author-link=Alan Myers (translator) |first2 = Robert |last2 = Forsythe |title = W. H. Auden: Pennine Poet |publisher = North Pennines Heritage Trust |location = Nenthead |year = 1999 |isbn = 978-0-9513535-7-8}}</ref> Until he was fifteen he expected to become a mining engineer, but his passion for words had already begun. He wrote later: "words so excite me that a pornographic story, for example, excites me sexually more than a living person can do."<ref>{{cite book |first = W. H. |last = Auden |title = The Prolific and the Devourer |publisher = Ecco |location = New York |year = 1993 |page = [https://archive.org/details/prolificdevourer00aude/page/10 10] |isbn = 978-0-88001-345-1 |url = https://archive.org/details/prolificdevourer00aude/page/10 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |first = Frank |last = Partridge |title = North Pennines: Poetry in Motion |work = The Independent |date = 23 February 2007 |url = https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/uk/north-pennines-poetry-in-motion-437571.html |access-date = 2 December 2016 |archive-date = 14 February 2022 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20220214172129/https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/uk/north-pennines-poetry-in-motion-437571.html |url-status = live }}</ref>

===Education===
[[File:St Eds Back.jpg|thumb|Auden's School at [[Hindhead]] in Surrey]]
Auden attended [[St Edmund's School, Hindhead]], Surrey, where he met [[Christopher Isherwood]], later famous in his own right as a novelist.<ref>{{cite book|first=Harry |last=Blamires|title=A Guide to twentieth century literature in English|year=1983|page= 130}}</ref> At thirteen he went to [[Gresham's School]] in [[Holt, Norfolk]]; there, in 1922, when his friend [[Robert Medley]] asked him if he wrote poetry, Auden first realised his vocation was to be a poet.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/> Soon after, he "discover(ed) that he (had) lost his faith" (through a gradual realisation that he had lost interest in religion, not through any decisive change of views).<ref>{{cite book |first=W. H. |last=Auden |title = Forewords and Afterwords |publisher = Random House |location = New York |year = 1973 |page = 517 |isbn = 978-0-394-48359-7}}</ref> In school productions of [[Shakespeare]], he played Katherina in ''[[The Taming of the Shrew]]'' in 1922,<ref>''The Times'', 5 July 1922 (Issue 43075), p. 12, col. D</ref> and [[Caliban]] in ''The Tempest'' in 1925, his last year at Gresham's.<ref>[[Hugh Wright (schoolmaster)|Wright, Hugh]], "Auden and Gresham's", ''Conference & Common Room'', Vol. 44, No. 2, Summer 2007.</ref> A review of his performance as Katherina noted that despite a poor wig, he had been able "to infuse considerable dignity into his passionate outbursts".<ref>[https://www.greshamsatwar.co.uk/Filename.ashx?systemFileName=GJ1922JUL.pdf#page=2 "The Taming of the Shrew"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230109070743/https://www.greshamsatwar.co.uk/Filename.ashx?systemFileName=GJ1922JUL.pdf#page=2 |date=9 January 2023 }}, ''The Gresham'', 29 July 1922. Retrieved 8 January 2023</ref>

His first published poems appeared in the school magazine in 1923.<ref name="JuveniliaNoPage">{{cite book |first = W. H. |last = Auden |editor-first = Katherine |editor-last = Bucknell |title = Juvenilia: Poems, 1922–1928 |publisher = Princeton University Press |location = Princeton |year = 1994 |isbn = 978-0-691-03415-7 |url = https://archive.org/details/juveniliapoems1900aude }}</ref> Auden later wrote a chapter on Gresham's for [[Graham Greene]]'s ''The Old School: Essays by Divers Hands'' (1934).<ref>{{cite book |first=W. H. |last=Auden |editor-first=Graham |editor-last=Greene |title=The Old School: Essays by Divers Hands |location=London |publisher=Jonathan Cape |year=1934 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WkJAAAAAIAAJ |access-date=24 May 2016 |archive-date=21 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230121032926/https://books.google.com/books?id=WkJAAAAAIAAJ |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1925 he went up to [[Christ Church, Oxford]], with a scholarship in biology; he changed to English by his second year, and was introduced to Old English poetry through the lectures of [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]. Friends he met at Oxford include [[Cecil Day-Lewis]], [[Louis MacNeice]], and [[Stephen Spender]] – Auden and these three were commonly though misleadingly identified in the 1930s as the "[[Auden Group]]" for their shared (but not identical) left-wing views. Auden left Oxford in 1928 with a [[British undergraduate degree classification|third-class]] degree.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/><ref name="DNB"/>

Auden was reintroduced to Christopher Isherwood in 1925 by his fellow student [[A. S. T. Fisher]]. For the next few years Auden sent poems to Isherwood for comments and criticism; the two maintained a sexual friendship in intervals between their relations with others. In 1935–39 they collaborated on three plays and a travel book.<ref>{{cite book | first=Richard |last=Davenport-Hines | title = Auden | author-link = Richard Davenport-Hines
 | publisher = Heinemann | location = London | year = 1995 | at = ch. 3 | isbn = 978-0-434-17507-9}}</ref>

From his Oxford years onward, Auden's friends uniformly described him as funny, extravagant, sympathetic, generous, and, partly by his own choice, lonely. In groups he was often dogmatic and overbearing in a comic way; in more private settings he was diffident and shy except when certain of his welcome. He was punctual in his habits, and obsessive about meeting deadlines, while living amidst physical disorder.<ref name="RDH-NoPage"/>

===Britain and Europe, 1928–1938===
In late 1928, Auden left Britain for nine months, going to [[Berlin]], perhaps partly as an escape from English repressiveness. In Berlin, he first experienced the political and economic unrest that became one of his central subjects.<ref name="DNB" /> Around the same time, Stephen Spender privately printed a small pamphlet of Auden's ''[[Poems (Auden)|Poems]]'' in an edition of about 45 copies, distributed among Auden's and Spender's friends and family; this edition is usually referred to as ''Poems'' [1928] to avoid confusion with Auden's commercially published 1930 volume.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Poems. Auden's first published collection of poems, published by Stephen Spender|url=https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/poems-audens-first-published-collection-of-poems-published-by-stephen-spender|access-date=29 January 2021|website=The British Library|archive-date=12 April 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210412044539/https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/poems-audens-first-published-collection-of-poems-published-by-stephen-spender|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bl.uk/eblj/1988articles/pdf/article15.pdf|title=Poems|website=bl.uk|access-date=25 July 2021|archive-date=15 April 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210415074509/https://www.bl.uk/eblj/1988articles/pdf/article15.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>

On returning to Britain in 1929 he worked briefly as a tutor. In 1930 his first published book, ''Poems'' (1930), was accepted by [[T. S. Eliot]] for [[Faber and Faber]], and the same firm remained the British publisher of all the books he published thereafter. In 1930, he began five years as a schoolmaster in boys' schools: two years at the [[Larchfield Academy]] in [[Helensburgh]], Scotland, then three years at [[The Downs School (Herefordshire)|the Downs School]] in the [[Malvern Hills]], where he was a much-loved teacher.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/> At the Downs, in June 1933, he experienced what he later described as a "Vision of [[Agape]]", while sitting with three fellow teachers at the school, when he suddenly found that he loved them for themselves, that their existence had infinite value for him; this experience, he said, later influenced his decision to return to the Anglican Church in 1940.<ref>{{cite book
 | first=W. H. |last=Auden | title = Forewords and Afterwords | publisher = [[Random House]] | location = New York | year = 1973 | page = 69 | isbn = 978-0-394-48359-7}}</ref>

During these years Auden's erotic interests focused, as he later said, on an idealised "Alter Ego"<ref>{{cite book
 | first=Edward |last=Mendelson |author-link = Edward Mendelson | title = Later Auden | url=https://archive.org/details/laterauden0000mend | url-access=registration | publisher = [[Farrar, Straus and Giroux]] | year = 1999 | location = New York | page = [https://archive.org/details/laterauden0000mend/page/35 35] | isbn = 978-0-374-18408-7}}</ref> rather than on individual people. His relationships (and his unsuccessful courtships) tended to be unequal either in age or intelligence; his sexual relations were transient, although some evolved into long friendships. He contrasted these relationships with what he later regarded as the "marriage" (his word) of equals that he began with [[Chester Kallman]] in 1939, based on the unique individuality of both partners.<ref name="EarlyNoPage">{{cite book | first=Edward |last= Mendelson | author-link = Edward Mendelson | title = Early Auden | url=https://archive.org/details/earlyauden0000mend | url-access=registration | publisher=[[Viking]] | year = 1981 | location = New York | isbn = 978-0-670-28712-3}}</ref>

In 1935 Auden married [[Erika Mann]] (1905–1969), the bisexual novelist daughter of [[Thomas Mann]], when it became apparent that the Nazis were intending to strip her of her German citizenship.<!-- Her uncle, [[Heinrich Mann]], was the first person to be stripped of German citizenship when the Nazis took office.--><ref name="Lebor">{{cite book|first1=Adam |last1=Lebor |first2=Roger |last2=Boyles|publisher=Simon & Schuster|year=2000|title=Surviving Hitler, Choices, Corruption and Compromise in the Third Reich|isbn=0-684-85811-8}}</ref> Mann had asked Christopher Isherwood if he would marry her so she could become a British citizen. He declined but suggested she approach Auden, who readily agreed to a [[marriage of convenience]].<ref name="Snyderr">{{cite book|author-link=Louis Leo Snyder|first=Louis L|last= Snyder|publisher=Marlowe & Co|year=1976|title= Encyclopedia of the Third Reich|isbn=1569249172}}</ref> Mann and Auden never lived together, but remained on good terms throughout their lives and were still married when Mann died in 1969. She left him a small bequest in her will.<ref name=DMartin>{{cite magazine|first1=David|last1=Martin|first2=Edward|last2=Mendelson|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/04/24/why-auden-married/|title=Why Auden Married|date=24 April 2014|access-date=10 May 2017|magazine=[[The New York Review of Books]]|archive-date=26 October 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171026164005/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/04/24/why-auden-married/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=BEEBhis>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/auden_wh.shtml|title=WH Auden (1907–1973)|year=2014|access-date=10 May 2017|work=[[BBC History]]|archive-date=11 March 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170311080348/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/auden_wh.shtml|url-status=live}}</ref> In 1936, Auden introduced actress [[Therese Giehse]], Mann's lover, to the writer [[John Hampson (novelist)|John Hampson]], and they too married so that Giehse could leave Germany.<ref name=DMartin/>

From 1935 until he left Britain early in 1939, Auden worked as freelance reviewer, essayist, and lecturer, first with the [[GPO Film Unit]], a documentary film-making branch of the post office, headed by [[John Grierson]]. Through his work for the Film Unit in 1935 he met and collaborated with [[Benjamin Britten]], with whom he also worked on plays, song cycles, and a libretto.<ref>{{cite book | first=Donald |last= Mitchell | title = Britten and Auden in the Thirties: the year 1936 | publisher=Faber and Faber | year = 1981 | location = London | isbn = 978-0-571-11715-4}}</ref> Auden's plays in the 1930s were performed by the [[Group Theatre (London)|Group Theatre]], in productions that he supervised to varying degrees.<ref name="DNB"/>

His work now reflected his belief that any good artist must be "more than a bit of a reporting journalist".<ref>{{cite book| first=W. H. |last=Auden|editor-first= Edward |editor-last=Mendelson |editor-link=Edward Mendelson|title = Prose and travel books in prose and verse, Volume I: 1926–1938| publisher = Princeton University Press| location = Princeton| year = 1996| page = 138| isbn = 978-0-691-06803-9}}</ref> In 1936, Auden spent three months in Iceland where he gathered material for a travel book ''[[Letters from Iceland]]'' (1937), written in collaboration with Louis MacNeice. In 1937, he went to Spain intending to drive an ambulance for the [[Second Spanish Republic|Republic]] in the [[Spanish Civil War]], but was put to work writing propaganda at the Republican press and propaganda office, where he felt useless and left after a week.<ref>The Good Comrade, Memoirs of [[Kate Mangan]] and [[Jan Kurzke]], [[International Institute of Social History]] (IISH), Amsterdam.</ref> He returned to England after a brief visit to the front at Sarineña. His seven-week visit to Spain affected him deeply, and his social views grew more complex as he found political realities to be more ambiguous and troubling than he had imagined.<ref name="EarlyNoPage"/><ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/> Again attempting to combine reportage and art, he and Isherwood spent six months in 1938 visiting China amid the [[Second Sino-Japanese War|Sino-Japanese War]], working on their book ''[[Journey to a War]]'' (1939). On their way back to England they stayed briefly in New York and decided to move to the United States. Auden spent late 1938 partly in England, partly in Brussels.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/>

Many of Auden's poems during the 1930s and after were inspired by unconsummated love, and in the 1950s he summarised his emotional life in a famous couplet: "If equal affection cannot be / Let the more loving one be me" ("The More Loving One"). He had a gift for friendship and, starting in the late 1930s, a strong wish for the stability of marriage; in a letter to his friend [[James Stern (writer)|James Stern]] he called marriage "the ''only'' subject."<ref>{{cite book| first=W. H. |last=Auden|editor-first= Katherine |editor-last=Bucknell |editor2-first=Nicholas |editor2-last=Jenkins| title = In Solitude, For Company: W. H. Auden after 1940, unpublished prose and recent criticism (Auden Studies 3)| publisher = Clarendon Press| location = Oxford| year = 1995| page = 88| isbn = 978-0-19-818294-8}}</ref> Throughout his life, Auden performed charitable acts, sometimes in public, as in his 1935 marriage of convenience to Erika Mann,<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/> but, especially in later years, more often in private. He was embarrassed if they were publicly revealed, as when his gift to his friend [[Dorothy Day]] for the [[Catholic Worker]] movement was reported on the front page of ''The New York Times'' in 1956.<ref>{{cite news | first = Will | last = Lissner | title = Poet and Judge Assist a Samaritan | newspaper = The New York Times | date = 2 March 1956 | pages = 1, 39 | url = https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/03/02/86535523.pdf | access-date = 26 May 2013 | archive-date = 21 January 2023 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230121032927/https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/03/02/86535523.html?pdf_redirect=true&site=false | url-status = live }}</ref>

===United States and Europe, 1939–1973===
[[File:Isherwood and Auden by Carl van Vechten, 1939.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Christopher Isherwood]] (left) and W. H. Auden (right) photographed by [[Carl Van Vechten]], 6 February 1939]]
{{anchor|Chester Kallman}}
Auden and Isherwood sailed to New York City in January 1939, entering on temporary visas. Their departure from Britain was later seen by many as a betrayal, and Auden's reputation suffered.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/> In April 1939, Isherwood moved to California, and he and Auden saw each other only intermittently in later years. Around this time, Auden met the poet [[Chester Kallman]], who became his lover for the next two years (Auden described their relation as a "marriage" that began with a cross-country "honeymoon" journey).<ref>{{cite book | first= Edward |last=Mendelson | author-link = Edward Mendelson | title = Later Auden
 | url= https://archive.org/details/laterauden0000mend | url-access= registration | publisher = Farrar, Straus and Giroux | location = New York | year = 1999 | page = [https://archive.org/details/laterauden0000mend/page/46 46] | isbn = 978-0-374-18408-7}}</ref>

In 1941 Kallman ended their sexual relationship because he could not accept Auden's insistence on mutual fidelity,<ref name="FarnanNoPage">{{cite book
 | first=Dorothy J. |last=Farnan | title = Auden in Love | url=https://archive.org/details/audeninlove0000farn | url-access=registration | publisher = Simon and Schuster | year = 1984 | location = New York | isbn = 978-0-671-50418-2}}</ref> but he and Auden remained companions for the rest of Auden's life, sharing houses and apartments from 1953 until Auden's death.<ref>{{cite book
 | first=Thekla|last=Clark | title = Wystan and Chester | publisher = Faber & Faber | year = 1995 | location = London | isbn = 978-0-571-17591-8}}</ref> Auden dedicated both editions of his collected poetry (1945/50 and 1966) to Isherwood and Kallman.<ref name="LaterNoPage">{{cite book
 | first=Edward|last=Mendelson | author-link = Edward Mendelson | title = Later Auden | url=https://archive.org/details/laterauden0000mend| url-access=registration| publisher = Farrar, Straus and Giroux | year = 1999 | location = New York | isbn = 978-0-374-18408-7}}</ref>

In 1940–41 Auden lived in a house at 7 Middagh Street in [[Brooklyn Heights]], that he shared with [[Carson McCullers]], Benjamin Britten, and others, which became a famous centre of artistic life, nicknamed "[[February House]]".<ref>{{cite book| first = Sherrill| last = Tippins| title = February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America| publisher = Houghton Mifflin| location = Boston| year = 2005| isbn = 978-0-618-41911-1| url = https://archive.org/details/februaryhouse00tipp}}</ref> In 1940, Auden joined the [[Episcopal Church in the United States of America|Episcopal Church]], returning to the Anglican Communion he had abandoned at fifteen. His reconversion was influenced partly by what he called the "sainthood" of [[Charles Williams (UK writer)|Charles Williams]],<ref>{{cite book | editor-first=James A. |editor-last=Pike | editor-link = James Pike | title = Modern Canterbury Pilgrims | url=https://archive.org/details/moderncanterbury00pike | url-access=registration | publisher = Morehouse-Gorham | year = 1956 | location = New York | page = [https://archive.org/details/moderncanterbury00pike/page/42 42]}}</ref> whom he had met in 1937, and partly by reading [[Søren Kierkegaard]] and [[Reinhold Niebuhr]]; his [[existential]], this-worldly Christianity became a central element in his life.<ref name="Kirsch">{{cite book | first=Arthur |last=Kirsch | title = Auden and Christianity | publisher = Yale University Press | location = New Haven | year = 2005
 | isbn = 978-0-300-10814-9}}</ref>

[[File:Auden's grave.JPG|thumb|upright|Auden's grave at Kirchstetten (Lower Austria)]]
After Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Auden told the British embassy in Washington that he would return to the UK if needed. He was told that, among those his age (32), only qualified personnel were needed. In 1941–42 he taught English at the [[University of Michigan]]. He was called for the draft in the United States Army in August 1942, but was rejected on medical grounds. He had been awarded a [[Guggenheim Fellowship]] for 1942–43 but did not use it, choosing instead to teach at [[Swarthmore College]] in 1942–45.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/>

In mid-1945, after the end of [[World War II]] in Europe, he was in Germany with the [[Strategic Bombing Survey (Europe)|US Strategic Bombing Survey]], studying the effects of Allied bombing on German morale, an experience that affected his postwar work as his visit to Spain had affected him earlier.<ref name="LaterNoPage"/> On his return, he settled in [[Manhattan]], working as a freelance writer, a lecturer at [[The New School]] for Social Research, and a visiting professor at [[Bennington College|Bennington]], [[Smith College|Smith]], and other American colleges. In 1946, he became a [[naturalised citizen]] of the US.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/><ref name="DNB"/>

In 1948 Auden began spending his summers in Europe, together with Chester Kallman, first in [[Ischia]], Italy, where he rented a house. Starting in 1958 he began spending his summers in [[Kirchstetten]], Austria, where he bought a farmhouse with the prize money of the ''[[Feltrinelli Prize|Premio Feltrinelli]]'' awarded to him in 1957.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.salzburg.com/nachrichten/oesterreich/kultur/sn/artikel/gedenkstaette-fuer-w-h-auden-in-kirchstetten-neu-gestaltet-164965|title=Gedenkstätte für W. H. Auden in Kirchstetten neu gestaltet|first=Salzburger|last=Nachrichten|website=salzburg.com|date=8 September 2015|access-date=30 September 2017|archive-date=26 January 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160126054952/http://www.salzburg.com/nachrichten/oesterreich/kultur/sn/artikel/gedenkstaette-fuer-w-h-auden-in-kirchstetten-neu-gestaltet-164965/|url-status=live}}</ref> He said that he shed tears of joy at owning a home for the first time.<ref name="CarpenterNoPage"/> His later poetry, mostly written in Austria, includes his sequence "Thanksgiving for a Habitat" about his Kirchstetten home.<ref>Quinn, Justin (2013). "At Home in Italy and Austria, 1948–1973." Sharpe, Tony (ed.) ''W. H. Auden in Context.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 56–66. {{ISBN|978-0-521-19657-4}}</ref> Auden's letters and papers sent to his friend the translator Stella Musulin (1915–1996), available online, provide insights into his Austrian years.<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Andorfer |first1=Peter |last2=Frühwirth |first2=Timo |last3=Mayer |first3=Sandra |last4=Mendelson |first4=Edward |last5=Neundlinger |first5=Helmut |last6=Stoxreiter |first6=Daniel |year=2022 |title=Auden Musulin Papers: A Digital Edition of W. H. Auden's Letters to Stella Musulin |url=https://amp.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/ |url-status=live |publisher=Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Austrian Academy of Sciences |access-date=11 July 2022 |archive-date=11 July 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220711074235/https://amp.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/ }}</ref>

In 1956–61 Auden was [[Professor of Poetry]] at [[Oxford University]], where he was required to give three lectures each year. This fairly light workload allowed him to continue to spend winter in New York, where he lived at 77 [[St. Mark's Place]] in Manhattan's [[East Village, Manhattan|East Village]], and to spend summer in Europe, spending only three weeks each year lecturing in Oxford. He earned his income mostly from readings and lecture tours, and by writing for ''[[The New Yorker]],'' ''[[The New York Review of Books]],'' and other magazines.<ref name="DNB" />

In 1963 Kallman left the apartment he shared in New York with Auden, and lived during the winter in Athens while continuing to spend his summers with Auden in Austria. Auden spent the winter of 1964-1965 in [[Berlin]] through an [[DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program|artist-in-residence program]] of the [[Ford Foundation]].<ref>Carpenter (1981) pp. 410-411</ref><ref>Davenport-Hines, Richard (1995). ''Auden''. London: Heinemann. pp. 314-315. {{ISBN|0-434-17507-2}}</ref>

Following some years of lobbying by his friend [[David Luke]], Auden's old college, Christ Church, in February 1972 offered him a cottage on its grounds to live in; he moved his books and other possessions from New York to Oxford in September 1972,<ref>Davenport-Hines, Richard (1995). ''Auden''. London: Heinemann. pp. 335-337. {{ISBN|0-434-17507-2}}</ref> while continuing to spend summers in Austria with Kallman. He spent only one winter in Oxford before his death in 1973.

<!-- ==Death== -->
Auden died at 66 of heart failure at the Altenburgerhof Hotel in Vienna overnight on 28–29 September 1973, a few hours after giving a reading of his poems for the Austrian Society for Literature at the [[Palais Pálffy]]. He had intended to return to Oxford the following day. He was buried on 4 October in Kirchstetten, and a memorial stone was placed in Westminster Abbey in London a year later.<ref>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography</ref><ref>{{cite news|first=Israel|last=Shrenker|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1973/09/30/archives/w-h-auden-dies-in-vienna-w-h-auden-dies-in-vienna-at-the-age-of-66.html?mcubz=1|title=W. H. Auden Dies in Vienna|date=30 September 1973|access-date=20 September 2017|newspaper=The New York Times|archive-date=14 February 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220214161853/https://www.nytimes.com/1973/09/30/archives/w-h-auden-dies-in-vienna-w-h-auden-dies-in-vienna-at-the-age-of-66.html?mcubz=1|url-status=live}}</ref>