The Complete Works of W. H. Auden: Poems, Volume I: 1927-1939 (The Complete Works of W. H. Auden, 1)

These two massive volumes represent the culmination of over fifty years work on the text of Auden by his devoted literary executor Edward Mendelson. This began while the poet was still alive – he died in 1973. The task has not been a straightforward one as Auden was an inveterate reviser, particularly of his early poems. The editions of Collected Shorter Poems and Collected Longer Poems, which Auden issued in his lifetime, contain the revised texts. So did the Collected Poems, issued after his death and edited by Mendelson in 1976. However, in deference to the settled preference of most Auden enthusiasts, he followed this up with The English Auden in 1977, with the original texts of the early poems. He also used these in his edition of Auden’s Selected Poems (1979, revised 2010). He then embarked on the project of editing Auden’s Collected Works, with the Princeton University Press, though Auden’s English publishers, Faber & Faber, also issued at least the earlier volumes (they are not named in this edition). This began with the Plays in 1988 and the Libretti in 1993. He then concentrated on the Prose, of which there have been six volumes. Now at last we have the poems.They have been worth the wait. For one thing, Mendelson has not only given us the original texts for the early poems but checked and corrected the text throughout, as Auden was an erratic and inconsistent proof reader as well as a reviser. The poems are presented on clean pages, but there are copious textual notes at the back, which give variant readings, and, where Auden’s revisions were particularly drastic, as in the sonnets from Journey to a War, he gives the complete revised texts. You can now see exactly what happened with ‘Spain’ and ‘September 1st 1939.’ The poems are presented according to their original collections, though note that Look Stranger! and New Year Letter are given their American titles, On this Island and The Double Man, which Auden preferred. The Orators is given in the 1934 second edition text with variants from the first and third editions in the notes. The joint poem by Auden and MacNeice Their Last Will and Testament is given complete, with clarifying notes (the new Collected MacNeice excludes Auden’s solo contributions). Auden’s own prose and verse notes for The Double Man are are all here, and the titles for the sonnet sequence The Quest have been restored. The wartime shorter poems, which Auden never collected in a serparate volume, are here at last grouped together. In my exploration of this edition so far, I have found no reason to disagree with any of Mendelson’s editorial decisions, except perhaps for his including some pretty trivial uncolllected and discarded poems..There is no commentary on the meaning of the poems, as Mendelson points out that there is already an enormous body of commentary. The obvious places to look at first are his own Early Auden, Later Auden and John Fuller’s W. H. Auden: a Commentary.There is going to be a further volume, to be called Personal Writings, which will contain occasional verse and other material not intended by Auden for publication. Meanwhile, scholars, libraries and Auden fans will need these volumes.