Books in Brief: Forewords and Afterwords

Forewords and Afterwords, by W. H. Auden (Random, 529 pp., $12.50). Auden’s admirers will not be disappointed in this collection of book reviews and introductions, and those readers who are not acquainted with his criticism—which was uniformly intelligent and, a far rarer thing, civilized—could do worse than to begin here. Auden had written about many of these subjects before (e.g., Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, Goethe, Grimm, Wagner, Verdi, Chesterton, food), but there are still enough new insights to make the book worthwhile; I found the essay on Shakespeare’s sonnets especially provocative. Amidst the straightforward criticism, there is one unusual piece that comes off very nicely, a review of Leonard Woolf’s and Evelyn Waugh’s autobiographies in which he compares their early lives and his own (“If not in complete accord with either, I feel myself sufficiently close to Mr. Waugh theologically and to Mr. Woolf politically to act as a moderator”). Some of these pieces have been lightly revised for republication. For example, the much quoted sentence, “[Tennyson] had the finest ear, perhaps, of any English poet; he was also undoubtedly the stupidest,” has acquired a footnote: “T. S. Eliot pointed out to me that he could think of two or three English poets who were stupider, and I had to agree.” Characteristically, Auden did not name them.

About the Author

Linda Bridges

Ms. Bridges is the former editor-at-large of National Review.

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Forewords and Afterwords, by W. H. Auden (Random, 529 pp., $12.50). Auden’s admirers will not be disappointed in this collection of book reviews and introductions, and those readers who are not acquainted with his criticism—which was uniformly intelligent and, a far rarer thing, civilized—could do worse than to begin here. Auden had written about many of these subjects before (e.g., Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, Goethe, Grimm, Wagner, Verdi, Chesterton, food), but there are still enough new insights to make the book worthwhile; I found the essay on Shakespeare’s sonnets especially provocative. Amidst the straightforward criticism, there is one unusual piece that comes off very nicely, a review of Leonard Woolf’s and Evelyn Waugh’s autobiographies in which he compares their early lives and his own (“If not in complete accord with either, I feel myself sufficiently close to Mr. Waugh theologically and to Mr. Woolf politically to act as a moderator”). Some of these pieces have been lightly revised for republication. For example, the much quoted sentence, “[Tennyson] had the finest ear, perhaps, of any English poet; he was also undoubtedly the stupidest,” has acquired a footnote: “T. S. Eliot pointed out to me that he could think of two or three English poets who were stupider, and I had to agree.” Characteristically, Auden did not name them.