Author: Stephen Spender
Profile: Sir Stephen Harold Spender is better known as Stephen Spender. Stephen Spender was an English poet, essayist and novelist. He was born in Kensington, London, England and died in St. John’s Wood, London, England. He completed his education at Hall School in Hampstead, then Gresham’s School, Holt, later at Charlecote School in Worthing, University College School, Hampstead and later at University College, Oxford. Inez Pearn and Natasha Litvin were his 2 spouses. W.H.Auden was the biggest influential friend in his life who introduced him to Christopher Isherwood. Spender had hand-printed the earliest version of Poems, which Auden wrote. Every half a year Spender moved from England to Hamburg on Isherwood’s invitation.
Spender was familiarized with a number of fellow Auden Group as well as Bloomsbury Group members. In the year 1929 he started work on a novel under the title The Temple. In 1933, T.S. Eliot an editor at Faber & Faber discovered Spender and in the same year he became a Communist Party of Great Britain, member. Head of the Party invited Spender to write for the Daily Worker on the Moscow Trails. Spender always felt close to Jewish people as his mother was half-Jewish. As a member of the Allied Control Commission, Spender assisted in civil authority restoration in Germany as well.
Writing style: Stephen Spender’s work was directed more on themes related to class struggle and social injustice.
Published Texts:
Bibliography
1943 – Spiritual Exercises
1947 – Poems of Dedication
1949 – The Edge of Being
1928-1953 (1955) – Collected Poems
1965 – Selected Poems
1966 – The Express
1971 – The Generous Days
1974 – Selected Poems
1978 – Recent Poems
1928 – 1985 (1986) – Collected Poems
1994 – Dolphins
2004 – New Collected Poems
Drama
1938 – Trial of a Judge
1958 – Rasputin’s End
1985 – The Oedipus Trilogy
Novels and short story collections
1936 – The Burning Cactus
1940 – The Backward Son
1958 – Engaged in Writing
1988 - The Temple
Criticism, travel books and essays
1935 – The Destructive Element
1937 – Forward from Liberalism
1942 – Life and the Poet
1945 – Citizens in War – and After
1946 – European Witness
1945 – Poetry Since 1939
1949 – The God that Failed
1952 – Learning Laughter
1953 – The Creative Element
The Making of a Poem
1963 – The Struggle of the Modern
1969 – The Year of the Young Rebels
1974 – Love-Hate Relations
1975 – Eliot
1975 – W.H. Auden: A Tribute
1978 – The Thirties and After
1982 – China Diary
Memoir
1951 – World Within World
Awards and Acknowledgements:
In 1965 Stephen Spender was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the United States Library of Congress.
At the Queen’s Birthday Honors in 1962, Spender was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and in 1983 knighted at the Queen’s Birthday Honors
Spender’s poem ‘The Truly Great’ was quoted by US. President Ronald Reagan in 1984
The Stephen Spender Trust was founded as a registered charity trust to increase knowledge of the twentieth century literature with greater focus in promoting literary translation and focus Spender’s circle of writers.
1995 – Awarded the Golden PEN Award
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