Stephen Spender, the son of a journalist, was born in London in 1909. He was educated at University College, Oxford, where he met, among others, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and Louis MacNeice, with whom he was to develop a poetics of engagement, writing powerfully of the confusion and alarm of 1930s Europe. He visited Spain during the Civil War, in 1937, where he assisted the Republican cause with propaganda activity. His post-war memoir World within World was recognised as one of the most illuminating literary autobiographies to have come out of the 1930s and 1940s, distilling a distinctively personal, humanistic socialism. His poetry has been praised for its exploratory candour, its personal approach to the stresses of modernity, and its exact portraiture of social and political upheaval. Grey Gowrie's new selection offers a timely and incisive revaluation of Spender's substantial poetic corpus.

Selected Poems of Stephen Spender, edited by Grey Gowrie, is a new selection and retrospect of the career of Stephen Spender (1909-95), as poet and translator, to mark the 2009 centenary of his birth.

About the Author
Grey Gowrie's Third Day: New and Selected Poems was published in 2008.


Book Information
ISBN 9780571244799
Author Sir Stephen Spender
Format Paperback
Page Count 144
Imprint Faber & Faber
Publisher Faber & Faber
Weight(grams) 175g
Dimensions(mm) 200mm * 134mm * 14mm