Volume 28, Number 20 · December 17, 1981
Uncle Wiz the Wizard
By Lincoln Kirstein
W.H. Auden: A Biography
by Humphrey Carpenter
Houghton Mifflin, 495 pp., $15.95
This capacious, cautious, splendid biography commences with its author's caveat: 'It is not a book of literary criticism.' It ably shows how certain writings developed from instances of a lifetime. 'I hope I have also managed to convey my own huge enthusiasm for his poetry.' Here Carpenter triumphs where others have been so drawn to anecdote or exegesis that poetry (and, importantly, prose) seems diminished. What he has not touched, Edward Mendelson's Early Auden fully provides, as has been noted here before.[1]
Review, 3946 words
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