Editing W. H. Auden (section)

===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>