As I Walked Out One Evening: Songs, Ballads, Lullabies, Limericks, and Other Light Verse

One of the leading English-language poets of the twentieth century, W. H. Auden (1907–1973) was born in York, England, and educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he befriended Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood. The 1930 publication of Poems established him as the defining voice of a new generation. He traveled to Iceland, China, and Spain during the Civil War, then emigrated to the United States in 1939 and became an American citizen. The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry came in 1948 for The Age of Anxiety. Auden served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1954 until his death and divided his later years between New York City and Austria. He died in Vienna on September 29, 1973.