Stephen Spender

February 28 1909 (London) - July 16, 1995 (London). British poet, literary critic, translator and editor.

Youth

Spender was born into a rather well-educated family. His father, Edward Harold Spender, was a journalist and his mother, Violet Hilda, was a poet and painter. As a teenager, he was very much influcenced by his grandmother, Hilda Schuster, who initiated him to modern art and theater. After the early death of his parents as he was still a teenager, he stayed with his grandmother until he went to university.

Stephen Spender was a brilliant student, that is why he studied at the University College of London and then at the renowned University College of Oxford, where he developed his writing and poetic talents, and where he met his friends and future collaborators W.H Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Louis MacNeice and Cecil Day-Lewis. He criticized the social hierarchy of the university and began to be politically engaged. "The social snobbery of the English public-school boys was a revelation to me." (Spender 1951: 36). During his studies, he was very much influenced by other Modernist writers such as T.S Eliot, and D.H. Lawrence.

The Auden Group

In the 1930s, he became a member of the Auden Group, which was a group of politically engaged writers and friends. The group was so-called by the media and the writers themselves never officially created the group. But it was a fact that they actually wrote together. That is why the poet Roy Campbell called them "MacSpaunday" for MacNeice, Spender, Auden, and Day Lewis. They were all friends, educated at Oxford, and socially and politically engaged. They influenced each other a lot in their poetic work.

Political Commitment

Stephen Spender always strongly felt connected with the world and especially Europe. That is mainly why he did not finish his study at Oxford University. In the early 1930s, he travelled a lot through Europe (Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain), often with his friends. He met there many socialists and communists. Stephen Spender was not a Marxist but had a social ideal and was clearly a humanist. In 1937, he fought against Franco's troops in the Spanish Civil War, and gave back informations to the British Communist Party.

Main work :

Poems: Twenty Poems (1930), The Still Centre (1939), Poems of Dedication (1946) Autobiography: World Within World (1951) Essay : The Destructive Element (1935), The Creative Element (1953)

Sources :

Spender, Stephen, World within World, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1951.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auden_Group

http://www.stephen-spender.org/stephen_spender.html