Stephen Spender

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

He was born in a rather well-educated family. Indeed, 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 College. 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 Cecile 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." (Stephen Spender, 1951: p. 36). During his studies, he was very much influenceed by other Modernist writers such as T.S Eliot, and D.H. Lawrence.

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 in Oxford, and socially and politically engaged. They influenced themselves a lot in their poetic work.

Stephen Spender always strongly felt connected with the world and especially Europe. That is mainly why he did not finished his study at the Oxford University. In the early 1930s, he travelled a lot through Europe (Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain), often with his friends of the Austen group. 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 engaged himself to fight against Franco's troups in the SPanish Civil War, and gave back informations to the British Communist Party.

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 :

World within World, Stephen Spender, 1951 : London, Hamish Hamilton. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auden_Group http://www.stephen-spender.org/stephen_spender.html